blogging with obligation

I normally blog without obligation but I know that my friend, the hospital knitter, is going to come here tomorrow to look for a new post so I better do one!

I've added my works-in-progress to the navigation bar. Right now I'm working primarily on the holiday surprises. (specifically the one for ???? because the other one is the Maze Hat for son that I've mentioned before and I think it has some sizing issues and he has enough presents coming he won't notice if I get it done late)

My son had his holiday concert last week so he wore the sweater I made last year. As you can tell, he's quite the goofball when he wants to be. (and he really needs to start growing back some teeth!)

One done, a bit of yarn pr0n and my rainbow

First and foremost. I got one done, isn't it lovely!

I have to say this is the best fitting and best looking heel I've done. I used Fleegle's heel method and it was wonderful. Look, no holes!!


I have to thank lovely Shannon of Unwind Yarns. I have to be one of her most problematic shipments. She's in Canada, I'm in Wisconsin. First of all, the Knotty Socks I'm working on are made of a skein of her yarn that I picked up at Stitches. So I already know I like her work so I signed up for one of her clubs. The first shipment has disappeared into the great beyond. There has been no sign of it, it never arrived and it never went back to her. She then shipped it again, this time as something similar to our Priority Mail. That one went back to her marked Return to Sender but not by me! She tried a third time, this time combining my first and second club shipments since the second one was ready to go out. That one finally reached me! And look how lovely it is! The needle roll and small project bag were included. (Plus she included a couple packets of my absolute favorite hot chocolate mix Land O'Lakes)






Now, to the rainbow... I stole this idea from Apryl

Your rainbow is shaded yellow and green.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is says about you: You are an intelligent person. You appreciate optimism. Those around you admire your fresh outlook and vitality. You're good at getting people to like you.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

Chicago 2008

So, to those that don't know, we have a tradition of going to Chicago before Thanksgiving to see the Christmas windows at Marshall Fields (now Macy's). We take the Metra train down to avoid traffic, parking and all those types of things.

First of all, due to my excitement of the lovely yarn in the last post, I stayed up way too late on Friday night! But then we woke up close to our normal weekday times. We just took it easy for awhile and then intended to take the noon-ish train but traffic made us late for that one. So we stopped and ate a small lunch at McDonald's and then played at the really awesome park. The spider web thing is really big. Take a careful look and you can see my son on the right side to get an idea of size. Then a picture of the inside and one of me that he took.


These slides are very long and SUPER fast!

Interesting swings, basically like saucer sleds on bungie cords

Regardless of your political affiliation, there's no denying that this is historic and we'll remember this trip as the one congratulating Obama
Later we went to Chicago. The windows were kind of disappointing, they weren't a story, they mostly were an advertisement for FAO Schwartz which is now inside the Macy's (Marshall Field's) building. They were pretty but not as fun and there were less of them, they didn't go all the way around the building. And we checked out FAO Schwartz... now a few years ago when they had their own building, FAO Schwartz was really cool. you started by going up escalators to the top and then worked your way down (kind of like Ikea) and there was always stuff to play with and try out and there was a giant ball rollercoaster toy that went througout the store... Then they closed that one and it's been missing for a couple of years. So it's probably nice that it's back but it's inside and looks like a toy department in a department store. Although they did have a $5000 dollar giant dragon and a $1400 giant pegasus horse or $800 unicorn. We did joke about where would MojaveSis put a giant life-size unicorn in her tiny apartment....


Lego store was the usual. Son got a star wars set that he's happy with. Then we went to Borders and eventually back to the train, getting home about 10pm. I slept in a lot on Sunday and then spent the afternoon building Legos with son.

-DFly

It was made just for me!!

This beautiful yarn was dyed specially for me by lovely Apryl. She has a better picture of it on her own blog. (posted Nov 11) The yarn was dyed to transition from the dark blue on one end of the skein to the bright green on the other. I'm in total love and immediately started knitting a sock with one of the skeins. Since we were going to Chicago, I didn't want to cart two skeins and it's going fast. I'm using Roman Rib stitch pattern from The Little Box of Socks by Charlene Schurch and Beth Parrott. (beyond stealing the stitch pattern, the rest is not the same sock)