A Solution Has Been Found

I have found a solution to my i-cord problem. The i-cord was taking me longer to knit than the soap bags. So I am using this Spool Knitter by Clover. I like the way it turns so there is not as much fumbling that goes on with this. It has been taking me 5 to 6 hours to make the i-cord using 2 dpn's. With the spool knitter I got 2 i-cords finished while watching TV tonight. This is a very good thing because I have at least 24 soap bags to make and I only have 8 completely finished. Yes I know that they look different but will function the same in the end.

In other news I did finish spinning and washing the last of the alpaca for Teri's shawl. When it is dry I thing I will go off somewhere to knit for a few hours to get it finished. All that is left to do after that is give the spinning wheel a good cleaning and a bit of polish.

Eric is on the mend and should be out of the house by Monday. We only have post viral asthma to deal with. By far this is the easiest part of the cold to deal with. Since he should sleep for the next 5 or 6 hours I think I will call it a night.

Same Old, Same Old

Eric has gotten the crud's again. This time a mid range fever and a very sore throat. So needless to say it was a long night. I have found out that this bug lasts 3 to 4 days. So Monday is the soonest I will get Eric out of the house.  Needless to say we are going to reschedule our romantic lunch.

John watched Eric while I checked out the new Joann's store at Oracle and Wetmore. I have to say that it is much better than the store at Roger and Oracle, but still not as nice as the one on the east side of town. For a grand opening I found their shelf's to be a little on the bare side with only one of some items. There was also too much candy lining the only way to the registers. Also is Valentines Day the ideal day to start selling Easter candy?

A whole lot of knitting got done; therefore I must buckle down and get some finishing work done.  Well it's getting late and I am sure that Eric will keep me busy tomorrow.

Another Busy Day

It has come to my attention that newly cleaned floors are more of a magnet for spills than a dirty one. I am also most likely to make a good portion of those spills myself.

I finished spinning and washing the "black baby alpaca" that did not feel quite right and left my hands black. After 4 or 5 washes with clarifying shampoo the dye stopped bleeding out. What I have left is a skein of dark gray alpaca from and older alpaca. It is not going into Teri's shawl because it is the wrong color. I will spin up the last bit of black baby alpaca tomorrow and try to get it washed too. Yarn takes forever to dry in cool damp weather. Yes I will get Teri's shawl done soon.

My knitting mojo was only interrupted by house work today. I have 5 more soap sacks knit up and in various stages of being finished. I will be making i-cord forever on this project. This should give me my first dozen and then only 12 to 18 more to knit. I am burning through yarn at a decent pace.

I also made a decision tonight that will surprise everyone. I have decided to forgo one of my yarn clubs this year in order to work on projects I already have. I will decide next February if I am going to rejoin. This did not take prodding by family members either.

Eric came home from his program today with the cold De jour, this time a sore throat and a fever. I will keep everyone updated. The good news is that I still have a lot of yarn to knit and fibers to spin. So no worries on that front. Since I predict it will be a long day tomorrow, I think I will call it a night.

I Have my Mojo Back..At least for now....

Today was a very productive day all around. I got all my errands done. I did a lot of general picking up. I almost caught up on laundry. You are right of course, I should not have told Eric that I was almost caught up. He went through bibs are a near record rate of 4 bibs in 2 hours. One did not even make it around his neck before he creamed it. Such as life in this house.

I went to go spin today and found all the music gone from my pod. So I played with the settings until I got the music back. It took about 2 hours to load all the music. So no spinning got done. I did however get my knitting mojo back. I am also back in the bad habit of getting the item knit and leaving the finishing work until later. I am sure that the pile will bite me by this weekend. I have 4 soap sacks ready for finishing now and one more on the needles that is almost done.

Did I also mention the 3 scarfs that I know of. Teri's shawl. A couple of hats. Plus project bags all around the house. So the theme of Wednesday through Friday will be knitting to get things finished. I will also tell you that I will not count newly cast on items as UFOs until they are at least a week old.

My goal this week is to knit through as much yarn as possible. To that end I hope to finish all the UFOs that I can. So it is time to catch some shut eye so I will be awake enough to knit tomorrow.

No Snow

Not much got done today. It was one of those unusual days when it was warmer and sunnier in the morning when I dropped Eric off then when I picked him up. The temperature also dropped 5 degrees from the time I left home until the the time I returned home with Eric this afternoon. We drove home through pouring rain. We also had rain and snow on the lower levels of the Catalina's. With all this we did not get any snow. I was so looking forward to making a Tucson style snowman. Think of a snowman between 3 and 6 inches tall. The last time we had enough snow for that Teri was still in elementary school. It was on Easter Sunday and just about every Minister and Priest in Tucson had determined that hell had frozen over.

Don't laugh at the next line if you are from a climate that has a real winter. I was hoping for 1 to 2 inches of snow to shut things down for a while tomorrow. But the weatherman did not come through. They said snow down to 2000 feet and we are just above that at about 2250 feet. Maybe we should have asked his wife.

Well I maybe on car pool duty tomorrow so it's time to call it a night.

10,000 and More

I would like to start off by saying that I got my 10,000 steps in today. Just in case you were interested, that is 5 miles of walking today. Which at my pace takes 1 hour and 40 minutes.

The more was, that I am now caught up on I-cord knitting for the moment. Today I knit 4 different I-cords.  Also, 8 out of 24 soap bags are finished. I am almost caught up on laundry, but pretty please don't let Eric know or he will go out of his way to make more.

I will try to get an earlier start on the blog tomorrow as I have come up with a quick and easy beet salad. I am just to tired to type up the recipe tonight.

Amazaing Math

Since knitting revolves around math, I thought I would take a minute to congratulate mathematician Curtis Cooper from The University of Central Missouri for finding the largest prime number currently know. The number — 2 raised to the 57,885,161 power minus 1 , which results in a prime number 17,425,170 digits long. No I don't think I will take this on as a knitting challenge. the 1 million row challenge is enough for me.

Today was a very slow day for me. I caught up with some friends. Yes I skipped doing laundry today and it will come back to me knee high by morning. I worked on the next fund raiser for Eric's day program. All I can say is that I am way behind in making I-cords. For some reason I would rather knit 40 rows of pattern then a 3 stitch I-cord that is 18 to 24" long. For some reason they seem to take me the same time to knit.

My major accomplishment of the day was 32 minutes of Wii. I told you it was a slow day. Since I might be doing morning car pool tommrow I think I will call it a night.