Battle of Knits

Cardigan pics

The most accurate pic I could get of the colorway. "Crumble" Madelinetosh Worsted (which is now called DK, I believe)

Here is the cardi after finally getting the sleeves correct.

A secret project

I love lamp.

I sit here, blogging away, feeling antsy. I thought I had a cold bottle of wine chilling from last night, but I was wrong. So all day I anticipated blogging and sipping a glass of wine and then having my second glass while watching TV and knitting my Tea Leaves Cardi. I dont really need a drink so much as I was just looking forward to the ritual of relaxing while writing my ramblings… do I complain enough? Wait, dont answer that.

Do not even ask about my title. Sometimes I am positive that my ADHD topics in one post will never be cohesive enough to come up with a title that ties it all together and then, some nights, I just dont care. (Damn wine!) It is 51 degrees out there and I am ready for some Spring! Yesterday I went by Hanks for Sunday “Stitch and Bitch” and I was knitting away on my cardi until the Super Bowl started. I got exactly the length I needed to get too so I could YET AGAIN separate for the sleeves. I went and did some super fast grocery shopping, then got home during the second quarter, finished up the baby bath and put the kiddo to bed. Then I watched the worst half-time show in history. Seriously. I pulled out my cardi and did a lot of counting, poured some wine  and went crazy… I got at least 3 inches knitted up by the end of Undercover Boss (loved it). I went to bed and today I wanted to take a pic in some good light to show off to my wild and crazy blog readers (because I know how to party) and to my dismay horror, I found that I had miscounted terribly since the sides were completely uneven. I felt ill. So a few hours later when my little Damien Love went to nap I pulled it out again, ripped back to the sleeve splits and re-counted… and then I counted again. Then I counted once more. I split for the sleeves and was nearly done knitting through the row when my son decided he was done sleeping. I was hoping I could at least get 4 rows done, but no luck. Tonight that damn cardi is mine. I will conquer this damn thing and even if I never even wear it I will feel completely satisfied! —Which brings me to why I brought this up in the first place… leaving Hanks last night around 6:30 it was just dark and it was chilly! I was thinking about how warm the sweater will be, you know, in like 2012. Because it might just take that long.

Today my son hit the dog in the head with a block. More than once. I saw him do it, didnt really get it, saw him do it again and jumped up to react and he had nearly conked the poor dog again when I grabbed the block and told him “No! We dont hit the doggie.” and then “Be nice to doggie” as I pet the dog, he then of course pet the dog, which resulted in the dog forgiving him, or I can only assume by the tongue bath he gave my son! This was my first instance of that– probably wont be the last, but nonetheless, I was pretty shocked. At the same time I realize it is just toddler behavior and I am glad that my dog, Monster is docile with my son and did not react. He pretty much just stood there. Poor dog. I gave him a chicken nugget for being a good sport, so I think he is okay about the whole ordeal.

I bought a book for my Kindle today. Don’t laugh… but please comment away! It is Dr. Laura (okay I hear you laughing) and the title is “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands” (is this a ROTFLMAO moment?) and I was pointed towards in after reading another woman’s story. Her issues were similar to mine, her’s being a bit worse, and someone had asked her if she had ever read the book. I was curious. I remember listening to Dr. Laura when I was younger (of course regretting it every time) so I went on Amazon and bought it. I really hate the tone already. I already feel like she is yelling at me. Then I think about it… she is quite the career and power woman, conservative, yes, but also balancing a husband, kids and work. I want to know her secret. I dont work, but I do some side things with my knitting. In any case I usually end up feeling stressed at the end of the day, wishing I had just 4 more hours and 8 more ounces of coffee…I’m constantly stuck in that classic Saved By The Bell scene where Jessica Spano is hooked on the speed pills and trying to everything and she is screaming “There is NEVER enough time!“  before she collapses. It was truly the climatic acting moment for that series, but I feel like that is my life. I feel like a lot of moms feel the same way. You try so hard, but you can never do it all… well Dr. Laura says (so far) that if we (as women) take that out on our man we are selfish and doomed to be alone. She mentions that men are simple (Agree) and that to please them we need to do nothing more than feed them (Mine does not eat) and have sex with them (duh.). This apparently equals a happy man. Now as much as I would love to test this theory and really put it too the test, I still have to clean my house and maintain our everyday life. Plus, as I mentioned it is rare when josh eats dinner. He is very unhealthy and tends to eat one huge meal between 1pm and 6pm during work. Honestly, I do not think he is a fan of my cooking. Even before I went Gluten-free I dont think he liked my food. He is not your typical male who eats red meat often and could live on chicken and potatoes… he was raised vegetarian, so he did not grow up eating burgers, steak, meatloaf, shepards pie, casserole of any kind, chicken dishes or BBQ… so he always requests side dishes as meals… like Mac and Cheese… I get it. I know why he is that way, but I still to this day cannot wrap my head around it. I pretty much eat vegetarian these days, but I still do not eat the things he loves– pasta or sandwiches, unless they are gluten-free, which he wont eat. So I am stuck making 2 meals. I dont mind, since I eat before he comes home most days, but really he does not eat at home much. So Dr. Laura… does this mean I am screwed? That there is no hope??? That is 50 % of your equation! So for now, I will just keep reading  (and having sex). These two things are never really an issue, except when I feel like I have been disrespected (often) so I think this book might be a waste of $8.59. I am really trying to be optimistic though. (really, I swear.)

(really!)

(Is my friggin wine cold yet?)

(Now there is a title! HA!)

So, another fun thing today was the introduction of carrot sticks. I have been nervous to cut him up some for fear of choking, but I think raw food is important for children (and adults), besides, he has like a million teeth, right? So I took a carrot and sliced it into toothpick like strips–seriously. He loved them! He munched away on them until his Daddy came home. Then with carrots in his mouth he decided to run to the bed to play wrestle-fun-time with Dad… which resulted in him spitting chewed carrot all over my blanket and side of the bed. “Well, at least he didnt choke,” was all I could think. I am currently washing my comforter and sheets. So much for getting to bed early!

I was poking through blogs today. If you never surf my blog roll, you should. I felt like I was on a visit… I went to visit Marr Haven farm, Stephanie Japel, to see if she had her baby yet (go see for yourself!), I popped into my bitch Jen’s blog, Laura’s PhrogBlog and of course Yarn Harlot. It was fun. **Good Times**

(Remind me to talk about the new TV next time. )

Shawl (again!) & some updates + news

Yeah, I am going to make you look at that shawl again. Sick of it yet? I seriously love that thing. If i didnt mention already, that shawl is going up to Maine to live with my cousin Allie. She will appreciate and I know it will safe from grubby little toddler hands! Besides she has much more time to wear something like that. If it lived here it would be hanging on something for 363 days a year… what kind of life is that? That shawl was made to party!!! Ha, yeah… okay in all seriousness… I bragged like a little kid who just won a spelling bee on my LYS’s forum on Rav and Lorena is going to post some picks of it on the Hanks blog. Without further ado…

BEHOLD:

Traveling -up to Maine shawl

I think this my biggest accomplishment since carrying a child for 9 months inside my body.

It has really brought me back. I was out of sorts for awhile.

…

Totally unrelated news…

I have some more donations lined up for the big giveaway! I was hitting a lot of walls at first, but now I am having better luck– Keep checking in for more info!

Josh is in Miami tonight, for some work related conference. Now I have gone to many work conferences back when I was in the corporate world. Most of my conferences involved drinking tasting wine and trying to hold important conversations while completely buzzed worrying about how red my teeth were from the wine, but never once were they ever held in a strip club. What you say? A strip club? Well, he didnt tell me that is where they are held… I can just only assume he will be going to one and then will sleep in far too late to attend the conference. We will see. In 2010 I intend on exposing much more of my personal life. Why? Well, why the hell not? I Facebook and Twitter all day anyway. I would like to give ya’ll something interesting to read besides just pics of my knitting, pics of my kid doing crazy stuff and general whining. The stats have gone up considerably in the last 2 months. Now, dont let me scare you off… Stats just tell me how many people are reading, not *who* is reading. So you are still an anonymous reader. How do I know you wish to stay a closeted reader??? You dont leave comments. Come on people. I think you can do that anonymously too. So keep on stalking reading!

(Does this mean I need to hit the spell check once in awhile?)

I have a bunch of gluten-free product reviews to post. I just have no time. Clingy child= neglected blog. Sorry! Do I even have any GFree readers? Most people think this is completely in my head, with the exception being Josh, since he knows how sick I get. GLUTEN IS EVERYWHERE!!!

I am really feeling for the survivors down in Haiti today. Normally I live the usual selfish live, believing if I cant see it, it aint that bad. Well, today I watched Oprah (sue me.) and Wyclef Jean (dont be hatin’– I love him) was showing actual video his brother shot on a flip cam. There are piles and piles of bodies everywhere, dead children and lots of people just freaking out in general due to lack of supplies and care. He said the stench is overwhelming and the graveyards are full. Here I sit in my nice big house, drinking my wine, listening to music on my laptop, typing away on my blog— and it makes me feel terrible! I dont know what there is that I can do. My only idea is this baby hat pattern I made. I am going to post it on Ravelry tonight and sell it for $5 and list it under the Patterns for Haiti. All proceeds go to help Haiti. I was going to type it up and give it out for free. I mean, its just a baby hat… but if you need to get something for your donation… here you go! I sometimes wish I was independently wealthy and didnt have a young toddler to chase right now– I would go down there and help out the people. That would be a great life. Might be hard work, but at least I would sleep soundly knowing I did what I could for my fellow peeps. Yeah, if I had a billion dollars… I’d be there digging through the rubble in Haiti, trying to save people… children… and well, humanity in general. Until then… I will cherish my son and raise him to be as giving and caring as his mommy is. The kid is golden though, he will be a a wonderful addition to society, I just know it.

(LISTENING TO WYCLEF)

Okay off to post my pattern, then off to knit and watch some Nip/Tuck. Wait! I cant leave this on such a somber note… SO here you go:

Don't be hatin' on Wyclef.

PEACE.

FO Traveling Woman Shawl

I finished it today. I love it! I had read some notes about casting off very loose so I made sure too. I think I could have even gone looser than this, but live and learn. Except for some minor problems on the second repeat around rows 2-4 it went smoothly. The ladies in the Rav small shawl group were right, it is a great first shawl/first lace project.

MY first Knitting Design: MIL Cowl

I wanted to knit something for my mother-in-law for Christmas. I know that she doesn’t understand my obsession with knitting so all the more reason to make her something. I started knitting a lace scarf and it was going well, until I had a moment of frustration and had to frog back about 6 rows… I was less than halfway done so I decided to rip it all out and make something stress-free. If you are a lace knitter who finds lace “relaxing” then please pass me that crack you are smoking and disregard this anti-lace post. Okay, its not “anti-lace” but this certainly is a design to overcome stress during the holidays. Even if you are like me and you do very little Christmas shopping, very little gifting and avoid get-togethers like the Christmas plague, you still feel the stress of December. Knitting a lace scarf was the wrong idea for a December project! So I started knitting a cowl for the MIL and never looked back… and seriously, I made it up as I went along. then I decided to share it with anyone who has no clue what to make for that person on their list… but you know you want it to be a hand knit gift… Enjoy!

Do not stress during December!

MIL COWL

I used worsted weight wool, Madelinetosh Eyre. It is a blend of Merino, Silk and Baby Alpaca.

I used size (US) 10 needles.

Cast on 70.

Row 1- Knit.

Row 2- Knit 1, Purl 1, Knit 1, Purl 1, repeat.

Row 3- Knit.

Row 4- Knit 1, Purl 1, Knit 1, Purl 1, repeat.

Row 5-7- Knit.

Row 8-15- Repeat rows 1-7

Row 16- Knit 2, *Cable 3 forward-(place 3 sts on a cable needle or spare dpn, knit next 3 sts, then knit the sts you held forward from the needle or dpn) Knit 4, Cable 3 forward, Knit 4* repeat until last 2 sts, Knit 2.

Row 17-19- Knit.

Row 20-24- Repeat rows 16-19.

Row 25-28- Knit.

Row 29-33- Repeat rows 16-19.

Row 33-35- Knit.

Row 36-49 repeat rows 2-15.

Bind off LOOSELY. Weave in the ends.

Wrap and gift it!

NO STRESS AT ALL!!! I think I knit this in about 2 hours total, with wine and interruptions.

(Note: the bottom edge on mine tends to roll, I like this effect, but if you dont, Purl your last row.)

For personal use only please.

Time to mail this off to NY

Download the PDF File

Raverly Page

I intend on re-posting this with some tutorial pictures for newbie-knitters. Stay tuned or bug me if I forget to do this in a timely manner! I know I only ever have about 3 people who post comments, but I know for a fact that I have a lot of readers every day. After installing my stats I was pleasantly surprised to see so many people visiting from all over! Thank you so much for reading and please feel free to leave a comment, email me at BattleofKnits@gmail.com or send me a message on Ravelry.com… find me as Slychikadee! If you knit this design, I would love to see a picture!

Why I heart Twitter (today)

There are a billion reasons why twitter is so cool. I tweet almost daily and love it. Every once in awhile something really cool happens to me on twitter and I meet such cool folks. This morning I had a brush with someone pretty cool. I was trying to tweet Martha Stewart, long story short… she was having a technology show and tweeted that you could tweet live on her show, so I tried and failed, tried again and failed… (Well, I was doing it wrong!) I noticed this guy @ShepardJim was tweeting Martha to and he tweeting wondering if it was live, I tweeted him saying I doubted it was (found out later– I was right, she is too much of a perfectionist for live tv, if you ask me) and I noticed he had mentioned being from Maine. I tweeted something to the effect of missing Maine, having grown up there… well I check my twitter tonight and he had sent me a link since he noticed I am a yarn-fiend…  http://www.hatchtown.com/ Well, he is a real shepard and has a CSA farm. I love it! They have fiber and yarn, so here is yet another reason I need to learn spinning! There is absolutely nothing I love more than people who raise sheep. So if you are looking for a good fiber deal, his fiber looks luchious! The yarn is semi-worsted and undyed according to the site and it sounds very tempting right now! Maybe after I get all my dental work out of the way I can afford to join! There is nothing more appealing to me than getting yarn straight from the farm. My only wish is that I could pick it up in person. I miss Maine… but not November-May.

That is why I love twitter (today)

I joined a congo…

http://hyenacart.com/Home2Home/ I joined the Home 2 Home Congo. I will be stocking my items with some other mamas who make diapers. There is some nice diapers and other things in the congo, so be sure and check it out! There is nothing more wonderful than cloth diapering… well, except supporting stay at home Moms!

I am going to let my Hyena Cart lapse, since it is cheaper to go with the congo and it easier to advertise when you have 7-8 other Moms helping! I can also focus more on stocking the congo. Stop by and check it out, tell me what you think!

Our logo

The owl.

We had a vistor today and I was lucky enough to get a few pictures of him. Please dont mind my terrible photo. I really need to get the flash fixed or at least play with the settings.

Owl, hunting squirrels, I hope.

 – If an owl hoots at the moment of childbirth, the child will have an unhappy life.

 – The Irish believe that if an owl flies into a house it must be killed immediately. If it escapes, it will take the luck of the house with it.

 – If an owl nests in an abandoned house, then the dwelling must be haunted. An owl is the only creature who can abide a ghost.

 – By eating salted owl, a person can be cured of gout.

 – If an owl hoots during a burial service, the deceased is bound to rise from the grave and haunt the living.

 – An owl living in the attic of a house will cause a pregnant woman to miscarry.

 – If a pregnant woman hears the shriek of an owl, her child will be a girl.”

Marr Haven: He just does not understand!

Look at how wonderfully chunky it is! I am literally smiling from ear-to-ear just typing this! I first read about this yarn on Knitter’s review and I felt like I was in love… I had to have some. Now that I have it, I have to have more! I wound it up and then decided to photograph it… about 30 pictures later… Josh says “How many pictures of that yarn are you going to take?” I just shook my head and kept snapping away. I wanted to get the lighting just right. This is a fabulous yarn and it is hard to capture the softness on digital film.

HE JUST DOES NOT UNDERSTAND!!!

Look, my dog understands… he can see the beauty he can envision the beautiful soaker it will become for Boo Bear!

From the Knitter’s review: ” While many yarn producers bleach their yarns — even before dyeing them other colors — Marr Haven does not. Hence the initially dimmer, just-off-the-sheep color.
And while many yarn companies subject their fibers to a carbonization process, adding acid to the wash to burn up any bits of vegetable matter, Marr Haven does not. That explains the flecks of hay and grass in the spun yarn.
By not being subject to such potentially harsh chemical processes, the fiber remains entirely scratch free and baby soft. It also retains a higher amount of lanolin, giving the fiber that telltale “wool” smell, softer hand, and greater water repellancy.
The yarn is spun on a mule spinning frame, a rare spinning device that closely duplicates a handspinner’s motion, producing a loftier yarn with a soft twist. (Bartlett Yarns is one of the few other companies that spins its yarns on a mule.)
The loft is so great, and twist so soft, that many of the fibers don’t even make it into the strand. They gently pill up on the surface, producing the tiny oatmeal-like pills mentioned earlier.”

It is so rare to find naturally processed wool. It is hard to find sustainable farms and I feel so good supporting the work Barbara Marr does. I touch this wool and I feel like I know the sheep personally… I feel the TLC between my fingers and I know that there is not a single drop off negitivity in this wool.

Perfect for making a wool soaker for my son’s precious bum. Since I started making wool diaper covers I have been searching for the perfect wool. I found it. I have not even started the soaker, but I know this is the best I will find.

Monday, Monday…

I enjoyed a tasty meal last night. My long time friend, Craig, came over and cooked up a tasty gourmet meal called “Saltimboca” which consisted of a chicken cutlet wrapped in prosciutto then pan fried and drenched in a mouth watering sauce made from Marsala wine and chicken stock. I wish I had more!!! I made some fettuccine Alfredo and sauteed some fresh spinach and garlic with a touch of white wine and butter. We drank an excellent wine with it, the well known 2000 Chateau Pavie, which was rated either 100 or 99 points. The wine was sexy, to say the least, but the dinner may very well have shown it up. After dinner Josh, Craig and I watched “Zack & Miri” since Craig had not seen it, Josh loves it and I was busy working on the finishing touches of April’s skirty, so I was indifferent.