FO: Tomten

My very first EZ (for the uninitiated this is an abbreviation for Elizabeth Zimmermann, a very famous knitter and writer about knitting) pattern is this Tomten jacket for Destructo boy.  It was both easy and difficult for me.  The easy part was the stitch pattern, I mean, what's easier than garter stitch?  Having to figure out my own stitch counts based on my gauge and deciding how many ridges to do, well, that was more difficult for me.  I am used to using patterns which practically hold your hand whilst you knit so having to figure it out for myself was terrifying (you could say I am a bit insecure about my own design abilities!).

It took quite awhile for me to get started, I was literally staring at the web for hours, perusing all the projects on Raverly and looking all over the web for sizing guidelines before I finally cast on, about 6 hours later (yes, it really took me that long to work up the gumption to just do it).  I really wish it didn't take me so long to actually get projects started but it often does, remember my battle with the socks?  Once I got it started it moved pretty quickly though taking only 3 weeks to finish, for me that's pretty good as I usually have 3 projects going and of course am often busy keeping the little ankle biters mollified.  Of course I had to restart the hood 3 times as the armholes were too deep and it took a couple of tries to get it right.  Let me say this, attempting to fit a sweater in progress on the 5 year old is difficult enough, on the almost 2 year old it is nigh impossible!

Once I got the hood done I looked at my radically diminished ball of oats colored yarn and said a little prayer that I would actually have enough to finish the sleeves.  This is where my recently purchased scale came in really handy!  Mister Vonkysmeed thought I was silly, but hey, I wanted my sleeves even so the scale helped my figure out how much was left and then helped my to calculate how many ridges I could get out of it by multiple weighings (I was weighing after almost every ridge, overkill? maybe).  In the end it came out just fine, if a bit slim on the oat color, oh well it's probably better to have lots of a darker color on the sleeve hem to hide all the inevitable dirt and food stains that will happen with this sweater.

Can you believe those buttons I found?!  They seem like they were made to go with this sweater, I almost squealed out loud in JoAnn's when I spotted them, the boy sure did when I handed them to him to hold until we checked out (he squealed a little differently when I had to pry them out of his hands to be rung up though).  Once I got the buttons and loops on I tried the sweater on Destructo-boy and he would not take it off.  He even yanked on the hood until I helped him get it up and wore his new tomten for the next 2 days straight, mind, I hadn't even had a chance to wash it yet!  It is terribly nice though to have my work appreciated, so much nicer than all the sob story postings on Ravelry about gifted sweaters ending cut up in dog bed.  Best of all, it fits the boy well now, and he still has some room to grow.  Hopefully we will get another two years of wear out of this sucker before I need to make him a replacement (unless he wears it out first!).

Tomten specs:

Used pattern recipe from Knitting Without Tears, Elizabeth Zimmermann

needle:  US 7

yarn:  Berocco Vintage in the oats, dungaree, and fennel colorways

details:  

• cast on 120 stitches
• worked for 30 rows before beginning hood
• made 9 increases on hood which is 44 ridges total
• for sleeves after 20 ridges changed decreases to every 5th ridge rather than every 4th
• 65 ridges total on sleeves
• 3 stitch applied i-cord all around opening, also used i-cord for button loops

Apples, apples, apples!

It is officially fall in spite of the heat we have been enduring!  And what is a classic fall fruit?  Yup, that would be apples, and we are lucky enough to live close enough to two different apple picking locales that we made a trip out this past weekend to Oak Glen to go apple picking.  In spite of the 40% chance of rain from thunderstorms (our local weather systems have been rather manic depressive the past few weeks!) it was a beautiful sunny day, almost too hot, note my sunburnt shoulders, sigh...

The apples available for picking this first weekend in October were Red Delicious, Granny Smith, and Rome Beauty.  Since I detest Red Delicious apples we got a peck sized bag and filled it up with Granny Smiths and Rome Beauties.  The trees were all around 6-7 feet tall, plenty low enough for a little girl to reach the lower limbs to pick off ripe worm-free apples.  I was expecting apple trees more the size of what were depicted in The Wizard of Oz, but these were great.  After seeing myself and Mister Vonkysmeed pick apples from the trees Lil' Miss was eager to do it herself, taking hold of the branch in one hand and grasping the apple in the other she gave an expert twist and off popped an apple, quickly followed by another and another.  Thankfully she did understand about checking the apples for wormholes first so we seem to have gathered a clean batch.  Destructo boy didn't really understand what we were up to as he kept picking up half rotten apples from the ground, we finally gave up and had him ride on Daddy's shoulders (which may have been his plan all along!) while we filled up the bag.

I foresee some srious baking in my not too distant future, we like apples here but I fear will not eat them all up as is before they go bad.  I have not counted but suspect there are at lease 20 apples in our little bag.  I am planning to make a yummy German Apple cake that I have successfully made before and may even try my hand at an apple pie.  Anyone know of any really delectable recipes?!

There were even some raspberries still available so Lil' Miss and I went in search of some amongst the rows of vines.  We managed to fill our little tray fairly quickly, much more were there than I thought would be.  Lil' Miss even caught on pretty quickly about what is ripe versus what isn't quite ready with her instructing me as to what to pick by the end of our last row.  I am so looking forward to next spring when we are planning on putting in a little vegetable garden in our sideyard, what fun we'll have then!

Funnily enough Lil' Misses kindergarten class is studying apples this week.  They all have to bring in an apple to school and will be painting with them, tasting them, and making applesauce with them.  I honestly had no idea when I set up the date for the apple picking expedition that her class was doing this, but it worked out great!  She even got called on to tell her class and another kindergarten class at the school about her experience of going apple picking over the weekend, I am such a proud and happy mama!

it's.too.hot.to.knit

Or blog, or think for that matter!  My town's average temps are in the low 70's so we don't have things like central air conditioning.  We are currently in the midst of a pretty nasty heatwave, yesterday it got up to 97 in my home and at 6:30 am this morning my thermostat read 80.  The thought of knitting makes me weep with misery, and the kids barely have the energy to annoy me.  So, I shall return when I can manage to sit in front of the heat producing computer for more than 5 minutes at a time.  I hope all of you are getting the fall weather I wish I had!

WIP: Wine Rib Scarf

 I don't know if you recall my brief post about a gifted yarn that I received right around when I had my wisdom teeth out?  It's a lovely skein of Fleece Artist baby alpaca in the wine/burgundy colorway, a boucle yarn that really had me stumped as what to do with it.  I was practically tearing my hair out trying to figure out what to do with this yarn, as it is a boucle yarn it really would not work for a complex stitch pattern but I did not want to do some basic pattern, I wanted something with a bit of interest to it.  I fell in love with the Truffle cowl, but after giving it a go the stitch pattern just wasn't showing up through the fluff of the yarn.  Then I found the Short Rib Row scarf and it is working beautifully!

As much as I love the colors of this yarn, a wine red and purple blend, it is not really my color, I am more of a spring colors kind of girl so to someone else it shall go.  Thus it will be a Christmas present for the lovely Missus Gordon, for whom I had originally purchased another yarn but after showing the freebie yarn to Chatty-Cathy and Auntie T was persuaded that this would be much more to her liking (which turns out great for me because guess who gets to keep the tropical sunset colored Araucania Itata I bought with her in mind?  That's right, me, me, me!).  I certainly hopes she likes it, even though it isn't really my colors, I do love how the handpainted yarn is looking with the patterning in the scarf, so are the kids as they keep stopping to pet it as I am knitting this project.

Starting school

For us it's not so much Back to School, as it is starting school.  Lil' Miss has begun Kindergarten and boy do I miss her during her time at school.  I managed to not cry the first day though, yea me!  She was perfectly fine with it all, telling me to go watch her from behind the fence to the Kindergarten recess yard rather than wait next to her for the teacher to take them into their classroom.  Such a self-confident little person, amazing!  We did go to the orientation the day before school started so knew where to go and the basics of what her room looked like and who her teacher was going to be, so that may have added to the confidence of Lil' Miss.  Apparently our school has had a little surge in enrollment as they had to hire on a teacher just four days before school started due to needing three classes for Kindergarten instead of two.   Guess which teacher we got?  I don't mind getting the new teacher, I am not such a fan of Lil' Miss being in the portable classroom though, it would be a bit nicer to be in a permanent room.

We are now into our second week and in spite of any reservations that I may have she is loving school so far.  She enjoys getting up to get ready for school and eagerly tells me about her day on the way home.  Luckily enough we live close enough to the school that it's an easy walk there and back for everyone.  We are even starting to see friends on their way home so are learning where in the neighborhood her new friends live.  We'll see how well our walk goes once it starts to rain though!  I plan on investing in some rain boots and rain jackets for both rugrats to keep them dry for that walk back and forth, we'll see if I need some rain boots too after the first couple of times walking in the rain.

I am still trying to figure out what to do with myself, how to rearrange my schedule with this change.  I am a bit of a creature of habit so will be much happier once I get it figured out and know what I am doing and when.  On the plus side, since I have to be up and ready earlier than I have gotten used to I am already adding in one good routine to my day, Destructo-boy and I are taking the looong way home from school so I can get in a little exercise every day.  Then once we get home I do my daily cleaning and then do my consultant work, and before lunch I have cleared all my "must do's" from the days schedule.  It is truly strange to have all afternoon to knit/scrapbook/sew before heading back out to pick up Lil'Miss at the end of the day.  I am sure we will all get comfortable once we settle in our new routine and I can only hope Lil' Miss continues to love school as much as she does now.  I still miss her every day though!