My yak hair! My yak hair!

Not really. I am chuffed though because I found ORANGE blanket binding at the decent megamart yesterday. I was just about to bid on some unseen seconds on ebay and Lo! I found it.

I have some super lovely orange minkee fabric and some darling orange fabric with black and white sheepies. I plan to make a blanket for DS. Now I just need to decide how big to make it. His current blankie is 30 x 36 (half a yard of minkee). It just covers him when he sleeps. So should I make one that size, or a bit bigger at 4 ft or should I go whole hog and make a 5 ft one? The minkee is 36 x 60 and I have two yards of the orange sheep fabric.

Tough to decide!

Knittins

Well, I did manage to squeeze in some knitting yesterday. I started the heel on DH's socks and I finished my picot cast on and am now happily knitting away on my own socks.

I want to knit a wonderful wallaby for DS for next year. I am itching to knit it. As soon as I finish DH's socks I am going to cast on.

But when I finish my socks I am casting on another pair for ME. I need these socks. They make me a better person. I am a kinder, gentler Kigwit when I wear handknitted socks. Really.

V. little knitting.

Not too much knitting going on around here. I'm trying to do the second picot cast on for my socks. And for some strange reason I have decided that the stripes must match the first sock. I never do this so I have no idea why I am doing it now. Must be some evil tendency that comes along with a picot cast on.

Also I need to knit the heel on DH's socks. I just need a few minutes to sit down and get going but I can't find those minutes! Most of my knitting time is in the car and I don't like to start a heel or pick up gusset stitches in the car.

So, how am I wasting my time instead of spending it on knitting? Well, my mom asked me and DH to reinsulate her attic. No biggie, right? Several years ago my brothers had told Mom that they had emptied out her attic. LIARS. It took us THREE days to empty out her attic and go through the stuff and cart it to the curb for pick up. One of my brothers works seven days a week at two fulltime jobs so he got a free pass. The other, whom I usually refer to as My Brother the Pillock, when asked to help told my mother "I have a house of my own to work on." Mom was good, she said, "Like Kigwit and her DH don't? And they have a baby too!" The Pillock is not known for helping although he did spend ten minutes replacing their yard light for them (after he had shorted out the other one).

Back to the attic: Four days to empty the darn thing and clear out a portion of the old insulation and build a proper, insulated storage area. Four more days to pull out the old, dirty, torn and flattened duct work and reconfigure and correctly install the new ductwork. One horrible, long, back-breaking day to blow in the new insulation. This morning we went over and swept the storage area clean, carried up the Christmas decorations and, after I went to work, DH went up there and cleaned out and flushed the condensation tray from their A/C unit. He was worried that it might get jammed from all the new insulation settling. I'm exhausted and my wrist, hand, back- in short, I ache all over. But it is finished. I know Mom only asked that we reinsulate the attic but to do it properly we had to do all of it. We couldn't just blow in new insulation over 30+ years of stuff up there, right? And because The Pillock  had been tossing stuff up there willy-nilly and had crushed, flattened and torn much of the duct work. This makes me really irritated because my parents had added two window units to their house thinking they just had a really bad A/C. My parents are on a fixed income and their electricity bills are absolutely horrible. I've always thought they were way too high and now with the price increases they are unbelievable.

I am really glad to be done with this. More glad than that. I am so glad to be done I feel like having a Mass said.

New knitters

A couple of years ago one of my coworkers, Club Girl, asked me to teach her to knit. She wanted to knit a throw like I was knitting at the time so for her birthday I gave her the pattern and a set of needles (big fat circular needles). She never got the yarn. So I gave her a skein of practice yarn and told her to pick up some smaller needles and I would teach her. No needles. So I finally said I would bring her some needles. And I never did. Until this week.

I started out by teaching her the English method as most people I have taught prefer that way. She tried and struggled with it. Then yesterday I showed her the continental way. And guess what? She's a natural continental knitter. I've never met anyone who was.

Another coworker, Crafty Woman, was watching me teach Club Girl and said that it made her want to do it too. She picked up some needles and a booklet on the way home that night and has been a knittin' fool ever since!

I started Club Girl on a ribbed scarf today. I have no idea what Crafty Woman is going to make. She just keeps knitting and ripping out as she *needs* to have perfectly tensioned and shaped stitches. LOVE HER.

Spring Break

Well, sorry for starting a blog and then taking a big break. I thought I had written the first week of March but OOPS!

I did a little knitting on Spring Break. I knit on my picot edged sock and I am well past the heel. I also started DH's socks. I am using the Best Foot Forward pattern from Knit Socks! It's an easy pattern to memorize and I am moving along.

And guess what? I have my orange chibi! One of my coworkers was placing an order from JoAnn's and she let me order with her to share the wretched shipping. I was going to order it earlier when there was a 40% off sale but the shipping would have been 4.95. 4.95 for a 4.99 item. It would have been 2.99 for the chibi after the sale and 4.99 for shipping. That just makes me crazy. I'm in the same boat with a pattern I want. The pattern is 3.00. The shipping is 5.95. WTF?? I know, I know, it takes time and material and postage to mail something but really. For a one page paper pattern they are going to charge me 5.95 to ship? EXCESSIVE. So I will have to wait until I can find other things to purchase at that site.

Edited to add: I found my copy of Folk Socks. It was hiding on a bookshelf tucked between Internet patterns I had printed out. I'm telling you, this book has issues.