Happy early birthday to me!

My birthday isn't actually until next week but yesterday my dear hubby Mister Vonkysmeed brought home my birthday present and handed it over.  I've known for awhile what he was planning to get for me so it wan't really a surprise but it was certainly nice to get it (ooh, and thanks to Pops-in-law too as this gift is from both of them!).  See, I gots a brand new iPod Touch!  I finally mentioned that I might like one after realizing that the Touch could replace my dinosaur of a Palm Zire and do even more.  I admit to being slightly resistant to change, so have never actually had an iPod of any flavor before.

My only complaint is that I will miss the stylus.  I know, weird huh?  But it did take me forever to upgrade from a DayRunner (anyone remember those things?!  I could not live without mine!) to a pda in the first place, and one of my favorite tools on my Palm is a notepad feature where I can draw or write lists, impressions of something I see, etc.  Although Lil' Miss has been using this feature a lot, like while waiting in a Dr.'s office she asks for the pda so she can draw while waiting, of course this leaves me with absolutely nothing to do, but at least the kid id happy right?!  I guess I can be a little old-fashioned about some things, like I detest e-readers, give me a real book any day of the week.

out with the old and in with the new

So, does anyone have any suggestions for apps I should look into?  Mister Vonkysmeed is so sweet he even made sure there was a balance available in his itunes store for me to use to get some things for my new toy.  I know I will want a better calendar, with the two anklebiters I absolutely rely on that thing to make sure I don't miss any appointments or classes of theirs, or mine for that matter!  I'm not sure what else I should look into, so suggest away!

Glynis socks redux

Remember how in my last post about these socks I said I was a bit off on the gauge?  Well, yes that 1/2 stitch per inch off on the gauge makes a difference, a pretty big one too.  After getting an inch of ribbing and 4 repeats of the lace pattern done I decided to try on the socks again.  It was a huge struggle to get them over my instep, nigh impossible, sigh.  I had to rip them entirely out and start over again.  So not happy about having to do that but the alternative of having socks I can't wear or that are only partially knit is worse so I began again with the next needle size up, a US 2.

Now that I have restarted them, they are coming along quite nicely, I only did 4 repeats of the lace pattern of the leg instead of 9 as called for in the pattern because I didn't want socks quite that high.  It seems that a 3-4 inch leg is what works for me and once I got to that point I started the heel flap.  I had to do 18 slipped stitches on the heel flap height, about  2 3/4" high.

The color is definitely growing on me, once I had the mental image of Shrek blowing big pink bubbles the colors make me giggle a little inside every time I see them.  It remains to be seen if anyone else will be as amused by them as I am.  The yarn is a joy to work with though, so soft and easy to knit.  It does get a little splitty but it's not a huge problem and thankfully my harmony needles are so pointy it's pretty easy to deal with.  Hopefully they will wash up and wear nicely too and if they do I will definitely be investing in more Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy sock yarn!

I am beginning to rethink the whole 6 socks in 2011 goal, I think I am going to end up with 12 pairs by the end of the year at the rate I'm going.  They may not all end up being for me, I just got some Knit Picks Felici in rainbow and tiki to make some socks for Lil' Miss, but I will definitely end up with more than 6 by the end of the year.  This would be why I sometimes lowball my expectations, I get so excited and happy when they are surpassed!

Excuse me while I rant

Hmm, no white here!

Can someone please tell me why it is so difficult to find the simplest of wardrobe staples, a white t-shirt?  You know, just a basic whit t-shirt that you can't see my bra through?  Okay, maybe I am totally out of touch with the current style (like I have always been, in high school I strongly resembled a goth-amish refugee, yup, imagine that one for a minute!) but it really shouldn't be so hard to find.  Apparently every clothing manufacturer has agreed to use the thinnest material possible and the public just accepts it.  It used to be that you could find a decent white tee, sadly mine was somewhat stained in the underarm area so it is now a lovely shade of rose pink, nice, but not white.  I mean, I even subjected myself to walking into The Gap (I hate this store, so not me!) bu even their most signature garment was ridiculously thin, I mean, a dermatologist could examine me through it!

With spring and summer on the way I really would like to find a decent white t-shirt, and when I do I'll probably need to stockpile them!  My favorite go-to store has sadly gone out of business, Mervyn's, and my second favorite store New York & Company has joined in the too thin material brigade.  It has been awhile since I last tried to find one, and I am getting ready to begin the search again, sigh.  This could be one of the reasons why I hate to shop for clothes, I need a specific item and just can't find it, or maybe I am being a bit like Goldilocks, this one too thin, that one too short, where is the one that is just right?!

Distraction

newly organized closet, yea!

This weekend I was trying to work on my scrapbooks and my Slice die cut machine was being difficult and not working right for me.  Okay, it's been buggy pretty much since I bought the damn thing but when it works, it really works and I love it.  Anyway, I got mad at it and needed to find something else to focus on, so I decided to move around some craft supplies as I had been contemplating doing for a long time while I waited to see if my Slice would spontaneously start working properly again.

Once upon a time I was an artist, well, at least an art student and I still have a taboret in which my remaining art supplies are housed (from Wikipedia: a small portable stand or cabinet, with drawers and shelves for storage. It is used as a method to bring organization to a work area. This name for a portable cabinet is common to artists.).  I came to the sudden realization that part of my reluctance to work on my scrapbooks is due to the fact it is a total pain in the ass to drag all my supplies from the closet where they are stored out to the dining table where I work with them so I decided to move the scrapbooking stuff into the taboret and relocate the art supplies...somewhere else (I so wish I has a craft room like I did while living with The Momster, I waited a whole week after Grumpy moved out to take over his room for my artsy crap!).

The scrapbooking stuff fits into the taboret nicely and all of the art supplies are neatly reorganized into my yarn storage boxes.  Huh?  What's that?  How did the yarn get involved in this you ask?  Well, it occurred to me that my current yarn boxes were bursting at the seams to contain the yarn I have stashed and since I use the yarn more than the art supplies maybe I should make sure the yarn is easier to get to and maybe devote more space to it.  So one thing led to another as you can assuredly see by now and I spent all afternoon going through stuff, reorganizing it, cleaning out things that I don't use anymore or are broken/unusable, purchasing some new storage boxes, etc., etc., etc. 

So, I got completely distracted and my dining table was still covered in partially completed scrapbook pages.  Sigh, maybe I'll make some progress on it sometime this week, but doesn't my taboret look nice with all the scrapping supplies in it?  And now I have some room to buy more yarn too!

obsessively labeled yarn boxes, hmm, OCD maybe?

Another Sock KAL

So I started out the month of March by joining another sock knit-a-long, this time with the Sock Knitters Anonymous group.  One of their challenges for the month is lace, and lucky for me I have a spanking new Sock Innovation book by the uber-talented Cookie A. begging to be knit out of so here I go!

For these socks I am using my lovely new skein of Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy Sock yarn that I bought for myself at the beginning of the year.  It is a truly interesting shade of pink and green, called magenta-moss on WEBS.  It truly is magenta and moss, with some browny-green thrown in for good measure.  I think it'll be one of those colorways that will grow on me over time (I have now decided it looks like Shrek chewing Bubblicious gum).  Happily I was able to split the yarn in half and get each sock started at the same color change.  I never would have been able to get the yarn split evenly without my yarn scale, I am getting a huge amount of use out of that thing.  Hopefully I'll get two matching socks rather then fraternal twins since I was able to get both started at the same color change.   

I chose the Glynis pattern out of the book as after perusing the projects on Ravelry of socks from Sock Innovation I decided that this pattern would look the best in self striping yarn.  My gauge is a tad tight, but really, how much difference will 1/2 stitch per inch make?  I think I'd rather they were a bit tight to get on then too loose. For some reason I am having a devil of a time so far keeping the pattern straight, I keep making mistakes and having to pull out work I just did to get it right.  Frustrating, but necessary.  Here's to hoping it'll get easier for me as I go along.