Mother's Day

To all the wonderful mothers out there,  Happy Mother's Day!!!

Summer Interweave Knits

My Summer IK arrived in the mail this morning!!!!  I really tried not to blow through this edition all at once, but couldn't help myself.  There's quite a few patterns that I would like to knit.  And I know months or even years from now, I'll find something "new" that I didn't even consider during my first perusal.


Patterns I want to knit:
     cumulus tee
     camp smock  I think this would be really cute on a little girl
     swirl skirt
     amelia hoodie  maybe with long sleeves instead?
     cat's eye tam

I'd also like to try the faux cables technique in the al fresco camisole

All in all, another great edition of Interweave Knits

 

iPod Love Affair

iPod Mini

I have a confession...  I'm addicted to my iPod.  I listen to it all the time.  In the car, I have one earbud in my ear (the right one, so I can still hear the outside traffic with my left ear).   While I'm cooking, that earbud's still in my ear.  Vacuuming... yep, both buds are in.  Mowing the lawn, weeding, washing dishes.  All done while listening to audiobooks or podcasts on my iPod.  When Husband is watching his many hours football, baseball, basketball (you get the idea) on TV, I enjoy sitting with him while I knit and listen to my iPod.  "Did you see that incredible play?!"  Yes dear, very nice (knit, knit, knit).

My love affair with my iPod all began in 2005, when my husband bought me my blue Mini.  I loved it!  So compact and cute, I could fit so many books and songs in the humongous 4 gigabytes of storage.  That same year, the Nano came out.  Daughter number one received a 2GB Nano for her fall birthday.  Dear husband received a 4GB Nano from his boss for Christmas.  Since Husband never listens to music, he gave his Nano to daughter number one, and daughter number two got her sister's 2GB Nano.  Still with me?

Dear Husband, being the generous, trusting dad, allowed both daughters to bring their iPods to school, against my better judgement.  "They're both in middle school," he said, "and they're both sooo responsible!"  E, the second daughter came home a few months later, upset.  Her iPod was stolen. 

You know what I did?  I consoled my daughter and gave her my shiny, blue Mini.  In the meantime, I found an abandoned HP iPod at my brother's house.  He said that the old iPod wasn't working properly and had bought himself a better one.  So now I had Brother's iPod.  That worked for about two months until it died.

Dear Husband took pity upon me and bought me my first iPod video.  Wow!  30GB!  I'll never run out of room.  "Hold on," says Husband, "you don't have enough memory in your computer."  Oh...

That's okay.  I learned to use an exterior drive to store all my files.

iPod Video

I actually used that iPod for five years.  That's a long time in iPod years.  Last year, the earphone jack started to fail.  First, I couldn't hear through the left earbud, then the right one went.  It still played when it was docked on my iPod speaker, the donut.  I just couldn't play it through earphones.  Crap! Mowing the lawn is lot more tedious without my iPod!

My "donut"

Dear Husband to the rescue again.  He said that he was going to buy me a new Nano.  It only has 16GB, but it has a radio, a video camera, a pedometer...  Can you brush your teeth with it?   "You can use your big iPod when you're listening to music on the donut," says Husband, "and the Nano for when you're doing chores, running errands."  I was warming up to the idea and even narrowing down on a color choice.  Maybe purple?

The next thing I know, Husband hands me my shiny new... iPod Classic.  "I got such a good deal!" He said, "For just a few dollars more you get ten times the storage capacity!  More bang for your buck."  What am I going to do with 160GB?  What about the radio and the pedometer and the cool video camera?...

Thank you Sweetie, that was really thoughtful of you.  Gotta love the guy.  Always on the lookout for the best deal.

I would love an iPhone, but can't justify the $30/month data fees.  That's $360 a year!  Can't I get an iPhone without the data fees?  "No," answered the phone guy, "why would you want an iPhone without a data package?"  So I don 't have to carry my phone and iPod?  Nevermind, you wouldn't get it.

So what does my iPod have to do with knitting, sewing, quilting, or gardening?  Everything!  I can do all those activities and "read" at the same time.

Gray or Grey?

I wanted to knit the Ruched Yoke Tee designed by AnneLenna Mattison as soon as I saw it in this year's spring Interweave Knits.  I love the peasant blouse look on the adorable blonde model.  She totally sold it for me.

My niece has a June birthday and would be the perfect recipient for such a top.  My choices for suitable yarn, however, was seriously throwing a wrench in the works.  I chose to use only stash yarn (that's another story.  Two daughters in college this fall.  Yikes!) and the only yarn that would work from said stash was gray.  Or is that "grey"?

my gray yarn

Now, I don't have anything against the color gray.  I like gray.  In fact, I have many items of clothing in varying shades of gray.  I just don't think gray is a good color for my 5-year-old niece, at least not solid gray.

I came up with, I think, a pretty good idea of adding some color into the project by way of some new yarn self-striping yarn and came up with this: 

It only took me five days to knit.  Yay!!!