Project Number 101

Project 101 is a hat. The 16th hat I have knit this year. 14 of the hats have gone to my favorite charity project. Yes, the next hat has been cast on.

Eric has been giving me very little sleep.  I really hope that he sleeps tonight.  I am so tired that my skin hurts. So I close with a picture of project number 101.

The Good, The Bad and The Dog Pillow

I am sure that most of you know that I have to re knit 2 patterns for lack of  copious notes.  So today I tried to start the rewrite with what I thought was a beautiful and expensive skein of merino,silk and nylon with a lovely color way and very long repeats for the pattern.  Well 20 yards in I was already at the 2nd manufacturing tie and I could see the third. By industry standards they are only allowed 3 tie offs per skein. It did not bode well.   If you know me well my motto is “Life is to short to knit with bad yarn or spin with bad roving.”  I pulled the project off the needles and removed the stitch marker. So into the dog pillow box it went. An hour of design time wasted.

I went stash diving and found a Crazy Zauberball from Schoppel Woole made in Germany. I have never had a problem with their wool or cotton yarn. It has a nice long color way. I started it after dinner and have the first 2 to 3 inches knit, so I did not lose to much ground.  Since it is a 2 line pattern with very little explanation I. Ishtar be able to type up this pattern and wait for the new sample to be finished for the pictures.

I also got another 72 rows done on the blanket and am ready to cast on the next square tomorrow.  It is going much faster this time because I have the first sample to work off.  By the way the 2 blankets will look totally different because with modular knitting I really have fun with color.

With any luck Eric will be back a program tomorrow.  It has been a long weekend with him sick.  This tired mom is going to bed.

Middle of the Night Mom Duty.

Imagine be lulled to sleep after a very long day by the music of The Canadian Tenors.  Then imagine be rudely awakened by the sounds of a young man having trouble breathing.  Once the meter hit 92% I personally did not care how low it wanted to go, it was time for a breathing treatment.  I risk injury to myself when his oxygen level is so low.   He fights the treatment in shear panic.  Then it’s time to do a bit of knitting while I am waiting to give round two.  I got a good 3 inches knit, yes I am using bulky yarn and U.S. size 17 knitting needles.  Some child is going to enjoy this alpaca/ nylon blend scarf.

Then it is time for round 2. It is not a very good sign that he is just as combative.  But at least his oxygen level is up.  He did manage to tweak my left wrist on the second round. So what’s a mom to do?  Go to the kitchen and grab a soup spoon and the jar of Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter and dig in. A little late night snack and some unwind time.  With any luck Eric will be breathing well and fast asleep by the time I finish my peanut butter. Just maybe I will be ready to sleep again.  Although I am not counting on it.  There is too much noise coming from Eric’s bedroom. A second spoonful of peanut butter and I will head back.

I really hope that I don’t finish my scarf tonight.  Wish me luck. I really want to sleep.

Monday and Keep Repeating Monday

If it is Monday it must be eyrpy Eric night.  He was dry when his aide left..I double checked.  He was soaked at 9:15.  The the wild eyrpy began. 

If he is quite for a solid hour I get to go to sleep.  

I wonder if this has something to do with me catching up on sleep today.? I got a solid 5 hour nap. 

Well it’s time to knit and maybe finish the main part of the blanket so that I can crochet  the boarder tomorrow and the finish the next blanket. 

Impressive

Eric made an impressive 5 loads of laundry today. There was one swimming day load, two eyrpy loads and two regular loads. This of course does not include the laundry from other family members or all the fiber stuff that needs to be washed.  So the weekend forecast is laundry as far as the eye can see. I would like to thank the good folks at Proctor and Gamble for making the Tide laundry detergents that work so well on what ever Eric throws my way.

If I have time I will warp the loom and weave a scarf and repeat.  As long as I am home, I might as well use up as much of my yarn stash as possible.  I wonder how many projects I can finish this weekend? I will let everyone know later.  I will also do some knitting.

Well it’s nap time.

My Victoria S95

My Victoria S95 got its first spin tonight. I had enough parts to make it work, but as of this writing I am still missing box 2 out of 3 boxes. I figured that after a 4 month wait that I might get all the pieces of the wheel together. However the Louet N.A. Dealership is not know for their promptness or customer service. It is a good thing for them that Louet in Holland makes one of the best wheels in the world. I do have an S15, which was discontinued a long time ago but is still a dream to work with even though I am it’s third owner. It was my first spinning wheel.

But, I digressed. The Victoria S95 is a dream to spin on. It is small enough to take anywhere to spin with. It is so quite that John did not hear me spinning less than 6 feet away. There was almost no learning curve with this wheel, 10 minutes tops. There was a very smooth peddling and spinning motion. The picture below is my first hours spinning. The only thing left yo figure out is the color that I am going to use to moderate the colors in the roving for plying. I will have to check my stash for solids other than white.

Not related to Spinning, Eric is feeling better.  One more day home than he is good to go back to program on Thursday.  I plan on catching up on sleep tonight.  I am also on the last round of the broader on Teri’s Blanket. Then I will have to weave in all the ends.  

Plans

My plans for Tuesday are already in the blender. I will be at home with Eric all day. Although the fever has broken from the cold, his asthma has kicked in with vengeance. So while Eric is busy watching PBS kids, I will get the serger out and make some more cleaning rags out of old cloth diapers. The cloth diapers last for about 2 years of Eric use and then become rags that last forever. I serge the old diapers in half so that they don't land up back in Eric's room.  Oh, and I love how the cloth diaper maker has raised the price about 5% in the last 2 years, but it is now a 5 pack instead of a 6 pack. So the price increase is actually much more. Can we say inflation?

While cleaning the craft room today, I finally added the charms to Teri's charm bracelet. So  instead of spending 20 minutes trying to figure out where to put the charm bracelet I spent 10 minutes getting the actual work done. Now the next time she comes for a visit she can take it home. I also have filled another box with craft supplies for Eric's day program, although I don't know when he will be well enough to go back. I am down to the dibs and drabs of the zenning and must resist the urge to stuff everything in a closet for later. Maybe I can fill another bag to go.

The sweater is coming along quite nicely. I am almost finished with the first skein of yarn and I am 34 rows into the pattern. The pattern called for 24 inch circular knitting needles. At row 18 I changed to 36 inch circular knitting needles. Tonight at row 30 I changed to 60 inch circular knitting needles. I wonder who goofed up on this one? In about 10 rows, I will take the sleeves and put them on stitch holders. Then finish the body and go back to do the sleeves. I am thinking at this point that it will take about a month to finish. I am also thinking that I might just have enough yarn to make it a long sleeve sweater. I bought enough yarn to make this sweater 2 sizes larger. This is my first me sized sweater. The 2 sweaters that I made for Elmo went much faster.

Recovering

I spent part of last night and all of today with Eric. He is on pedilyte, which is a good thing. We will hopefully try formula tomorrow.  This is an awful cycle that Eric is in, we just don't know how to break.   I did get some knitting done while I was sitting with Eric. I added a couple of inches to a poncho. Tonight I finished 1 kids hat and cast on another. I am almost finished with the brim.  I just need to unwind so that I can get a little sleep. My sleep cycle will be messed up for a few days. 

Tummy Bug and take backs

Last night was a very long night with Eric. The eyrpy tummy bug that is going around town has hit Eric with vengeance. At he peak of the mayhem Eric made a full basket of laundry in just 30 minutes. This lead to a couple of learning experiences with the new washer.

The first thing I want to say is never ever wash eyrpy laundry on the turbo cycle unless you want to wash the load twice. On low water machines use extra water and a longer wash cycle.

The second thing I learned was that there is a child lock on our washer. It was not on my list of needs, but I have it anyway by default. Reading the washing machine manual at 4:30 am looking for a code is not my idea of fun. The good news is that by 5 am I had figured it out by myself and did not have to wake John to solve the problem.

I guess that this is part of my learning curve on the new washer. Washing machines have changed a lot in the 25 years since I last got a new machine. When I looked at the manual, when it said heavily soiled, I assumed kids playing in mud and dirt. I think that it should have a different section dealing with sick, but that maybe just me because we deal with it a lot.

Oh by the way, Sears sent people out to level the washing machine, without a level. I have yet to do a load but we will see how they did. They still gave the self adjusting spiel. No that does not work. This crew added the self adjusting springs as well. Don't they know people do read the manuals that come with the machines? So I got out the level and pointed out that even I knew it was not level. It also made me uncomfortable when the delivery guys said how nice our TV was.  I made sure to point out that it was 5 years old (therefore not worth stealing).

I am sure that with Eric home tomorrow he will help me knit a few more hats. I have a pile of 6 hats that need tags, with 2 more in progress. We just have to get rid of the fever that came with the eyrpyness before we can send Eric back to his day program.

I am positive that tomorrow will be a better day.

An Update

I have used the time that Eric is home sick to catch up on cleaning and making things. Nap time is a perfect time to cut up old t-shirts and sheets for rag rugs.  I did not buy the special rag rug cutter as I feel that between my scissors and rotary cutter they do the job. After I finish my rag rug series, I will be creating a series for the Taglit Program at the JCC, I am hoping that they will go in the fall fund raiser, but I don't know for sure.

Knitting is getting done in bits and pieces, mostly while I sit with Eric. I am finding after a full day with Eric I am too tired to knit more than a couple of rows a night. I am hoping that Eric will go back to program on Monday. If he does, then I will spend the whole day on me and things I want to do. Two weeks of Eric being at home sick is enough to tire anyone out.

Well yesterday was the 1st 100 degree day at our house so its time to go get the laundry started so I can give the appliances the afternoon off.

Busy with a Chance of Knitting

My guess last night, that Eric would be home sick today was spot on. Eric was running a fever all day long and it seemed to get higher as the day wore on. I am really hoping it was do to the family outing on Sunday and not the really bad cold that is going around his day program. He was cranky all day and wanted me close by all day.

So my day consisted of catching up on laundry, a little picking up around the house and lots and lots of knitting. I started out the day on size 6 knitting needles working on the stripes of a hat. Then when I got tired of that I went to size 7 knitting needles and worked on a poncho, 1.5 inches later it was time to switch things up. So I went to size 10.5 knitting needles. I started 3 hats and finished 2 of them. This was more my speed today. I wanted to finish things fast. For some reason I just need to get things finished quickly when I am sitting with Eric all day. I need to feel that I have accomplished something besides sitting all day.  I also took the time to weave in the ends of another hat.

I don't have a row count yet. I just threw all the freshly knitted items into a laundry basket to be tagged and counted at a later date. If worst comes to worst, I will count all the rows when the laundry basket is full.

Well it looks like Eric is going to be home tomorrow too, so I think it is time to call it a day.

A Wirlwind of a Week.

It has been a long time since I have written a blog. First off I have been very busy getting caught up around here. Some real progress was made. Projects were actually getting finished in the craft room. You know the kind, with just a few minutes of work and then the project is done. I cleared a bunch of them.

Saturday I got to go see the Pinatas that I had been working on get smashed. It left me with some design changes to mull over for next year. The first will be to add more layers of paper ma'che and maybe even a few pieces of well placed duct tape. The second would be to come up with a different hanging mechanism. Something a little more sturdy. I want to make it a little harder to get to the goodies inside. Eric had a good time at the party, but it left him a little tired.

Sunday was an all around rest day around the house. Everyone took a 3 hour afternoon nap. That did not stop Eric from having a bad night. The wild eyrping started at around 3:30 am Monday morning. By 5;30 am I had hoisted the virtual white flag of surrender. Eric did manage to give me a 20 hour work day. We also discovered how to ramp down a little bit on eyrpy laundry. When Eric was getting ready to eyrp we just powered up his suction machine and got it very close to his mouth. Then when it started, we just suctioned all the eyrp we could. I think it may have been easier on Eric too, as he did not have to work as hard to get everything out.

As bad as the eyrping was the dry heaves were much harder on him. He did not want me to leave his room. Mommy just had to be there for him. So what else was there to do but knit. That lasted a good 12 hours. He is still feeling miserable today, but not as bad as yesterday. Yes, he had to be close by today. Eric was also a little miffed at me for not making him all better. I am hoping to get him back on formula sometime Wednesday. John was so wonderful through this all, he even manage to get me 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep this morning.

As strange as it may seem, during all of this I got my knitting and design mojo back. I am in the middle of one design. I am making the middle size as a sample, this is just by a random act of casting on.  I think I might ask the test knitters to knit up the small and large sized ones. So if you have a pair of US sized 13 knitting needles and a very full scrap basket of odd sized balls of yarn let me know. I also sketched out the next pattern idea in the middle of my hair cut today. I think I should add a small sketch book to my already over heavy purse.

We are hoping for a very good night where everyone gets to sleep. Wish us luck.

We Made it Through the Cold

It has been a crazy couple of days around here with Eric sick, yet again. I almost kept up with the laundry. The most wonderful news of the day is that Eric is  back on formula as of 6:30 tonight.

I did manage to finish one knitting UFO project per day for the last few days. So my pile of UFOs is getting just a touch smaller. No big dent made here. Not a lot of spinning got done either because Eric needed so much of my time. I am totally exhausted so this is a really short post tonight.