babies and knitting and visits

It seems like I am getting loads of babies to knit for. My granddaughter Mina was born in August and now I have heard that Angie, my youngest sons girl friend, is pregnant! Then there is the driver we see frequently at work who is only about 8 weeks away from having her baby. I saw her night before last and passed on a pair of baby booties I had crocheted from some bfl handspun. You should have seen her glow :-)

Today I cast on and started a baby blanket for Angie's baby. I am using a nice looking pattern I found online The Castlefair baby blanket is very similar to a hap shawl actually. The center is all garter stitch and then the border and edging are in simple lace patterns making it a very special appearing blanket for a little bit of effort. I do love those type patterns. This one is being made in Caron Simply Soft in their Baby Brights Ombre. I think it is going to be rather pretty. I have enough for the center of the blanket but will buy a solid for the border and edging I think.

Also on the knitting front I made the mistake of buying the new Cat Bordhi book "New Pathways for Sock Knitters" Sigh this book may just make me change my mind about knitting socks. I actually have a couple of pairs now cast on just to see how the different architectures work. If you enjoy knitting socks you really NEED this book.

For those that have followed the news my son Peter was here last weekend for a quick visit. He and his friend Nate were headed to Nate's family in San Digeo but they stayed here for 4 days. While here they got to go see the Avalanche play. Grin they came back grinning from ear to ear asking how I had gotten them club seats for the game... Giggle I had no idea what a club seat was I just got him the best priced seats I could find. Turns out I did a good thing and they claim they are now spoiled for seats anywhere else.

HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY

As they said in the one cartoon that my sons watched. I got a call at about 1am MST from my oldest who has been in Iraq. He was in Kuwait waiting for his freedom bird :) His large extended family, many of whom he has never met,that will be cheering today.

It feels odd to hear your postman say Semper Fi when he delivers a package from Iraq or hear it at the counter when they see a package to a Marine over there. Uh rah(sp) and Semper Fi have become part of the vocabulary at work too. One driver just had his son get back and now the son and his wife are going to Okinawa, this was their second trip to the sandbox and he is very relived they will be away from it for a while. Now I can pass on that mine is home too :)

It will be even nicer when all are home and that includes those in all the killing zones.

Fair time is over

And I am soooooooo ready for some rest but it is always lots of fun during the fairs. I demo spinning at our local County Fair and of course I have some entries in. This year my biggest project was a shawl in a heavy lace weight/light fingering weight alpaca/silk handspun yarn. The shawl did well at both county fair and state fair earning a first place award both places. The best prize however came after the fairs when the lady I gave it to told me I had made her week! She had the most special goofy smile on. Grin and she looks lots better in the shawl then my borrowed wheel.

I also came home from the fairs with TWO new family members. Little Thunder is a beige roan Peruvian cavy (guinea pig) and Mr. Chips is a broken blue French Angora. Thunder is only 2 months old when he is an adult his coat will put the one on Mr. Chips to shame.

Mr. Chips is my second angora or rather the second I own currently his rabbitry mate is a beautiful red Satin Angora doe who has been making goo goo eyes at him. Grin I told Salsa to keep them eyes to her self she is not getting bred. She is already over 2 and never been bred. To do so now could kill her.

Campanula for the cure moves forward

I got my yarn in from Twinkletoes Yarns and I am busy swatching to see if I need to change needle size to get gauge. The yarn is a pale almost bubblegum pink with areas of lilac and smokey grey. Not enough to distract from the pattern but enough to be noticeable.

In this picture of the yarn you can see a bit of the subtle colors in it besides the pale pink. I think this will be a beautiful pair of socks for someone that likes pink. Grin I already have a couple of willing recipients in mind.

Remember it is not too late to join in and support this great cause. Just go to Campanula for the Cure to learn how.

I hate knitting Socks

I also don't care much smart know it alls who think that it is just a matter of finding the right pattern or technique. The fact of the matter is I have lots of patterns and I have knit socks but they are far from my favorite item to knit.

So why am I looking at a new sock pattern and have even bought the yarn to knit it with? Because it is for a cause I strongly support. The sock pattern is CAMPANULA for the CURE. You can see it and read all the details at the designers blog

This pattern will be knit in a lovely soft pink yarn from Over The Rainbow Yarns She has some other pink yarns and yarns with pink in them but the one I got was my favorite and was her last skein. Whew glad only one is needed for a pair of socks.

I hope others will join me in my sock knitting.

don't you hate losing all your paswords?

Got a new motherboard for my old system and I followed all the rules and made a nice backup of the information I wanted to make sure I would not lose...

Had problems with old system and my DH got me a brand new system for Mothers Day. YEA! A nice machine with an LCD wide screen monitor etc and Vista operating system.

Vista does not recognize my backup file sigh Nor does XP so here I sit with no information from my backup available and that includes my passwords and user names for my web host and my old blog that was hosted by my domain :-/ not a good situation. Have been wanting to post things but was unable to get in to do so. Finally got tired of that situation and figured Blogger is as good a place to start over as any.

Hope this one stays here for a while but I really want to get into that backup...