Christmas Aftermath

I failed to finish Michael's Christmas sweater by Christmas and I am okay with it. We've been having tropical winter weather so who needs a wool sweater right now anyway. Despite a high yuck factor (a pile of wool on my lap in the sweltering wet heat because I refuse to use the air conditioner in December), I have set a new personal knitting record for sweater knitting. I accomplished this in one week:



Granted, Michael wears a pretty small sweater. However, I think I've done well for a week's worth of knitting considering the last sweater I knit for him took 3 weeks and that was last Christmas and an even smaller sweater. I am fairly glowing with pride over the whole thing. And since I promised my Mom a sweater a little over a year ago, I need a good boost to my sweater knitting mojo. (I actually knit an entire back and a portion of the front to a sweater for my mom before I decided I didn't like the way it looked and accepted the fact it was too big anyway. It has been sitting and waiting for me to unravel it ever since. I have a new pattern in mind and plan to cast on for it in the very near future.)

Yesterday I wound a warp for a wrap for me. I wanted something long and wide and cozy.



I bought the weft yarn in front from Heritage Yarns a couple years ago before Kurt finished repairing my loom. It is a discontinued yarn called "Cloud 9" in the "Flower Garden" colorway.

I'd planned a 520 end warp and ran out of Perle cotton at 475 ends. Although I did the math before starting and should have had at least 20 yards left over after winding my complete warp, I think the string I cut to measure my warp stretched as I plotted my course around the warping board resulting in a longer warp then planned and an insufficient supply of warp yarn. Fortunately, I should be able to reduce the width of the wrap and make due with what I have. If I am careful not to pull in the sides of the warp as I weave, I am hoping I can reduce the take-in and have a wrap as wide as I want it. The recent scarves I've woven have had almost no take-in at the sides when finished so I feel the odds of success are good. Otherwise, I'll have a crazy fat scarf on my hands.

We have a new wireless Internet modem and all is well on the computer front right now. I am so glad.

Christmas 2008

Any minute, our new wireless Internet modem could go up in flames. Seriously. We've been unable to connect to the Internet all day except in bits and pieces. However, in an amazing feat of obsessive-compulsive behavior, I've managed to upload a dozen Christmas pictures over the last few hours of trying.

We had a nice Christmas. After sitting up to watch Star Gate SG1 with the children until an irrationally late hour on Christmas Eve (I have no idea what we were thinking), everyone slept in this morning. Well, not Kurt. He generally gets up insanely early. This morning was no exception. He got up and tried to be helpful. Putting the dishes away. Or so he says. I awoke convinced someone had crashed Michael's new wagon into the wall separating my bedroom from the living room.

Originally we planned to open presents after breakfast. However, I gave in to the children's pleading when I realized I could probably escape cooking an entire meal if we had breakfast AFTER presents and ate dinner a bit early.



I gave the children the coordinating hats I knit for them.



Gregory's favorite color is blue. Gregory actually got excited about getting a hat after I told him I wouldn't knit for him anymore until he took better care of the stuff I make. We'll see how he does with his hat.



Gabrielle's favorite color is pink.



And Michael flips over the color red.

Unfortunately for Michael, green wagons cost less than red ones.



One of these days I will have to face him when he discovers wagons are supposed to be red. Oh well.

I think I finally picked a Christmas gift for one of the children of which Kurt approves. When I told Kurt I got Michael a wagon, I suggested we could teach Michael to transport bags of feed from the workshop to the chicken coops. Kurt liked the idea - very much.

And while I shopped for improperly colored toys for Michael, we picked up a blue Lightning McQueen car.



The whole blue thing confused Michael temporarily. However, he discovered the blue car shoots missiles and he got over the whole red thing rather quickly.

Michael really loves his red hat. In spite of sweltering tropical weather, Michael wore his wool hat all day and then hid it under some Christmas decorations so I wouldn't take it and put it away.



Gregory loved his new digital camera, though the rest of us are starting to become very annoyed with it.



After a few hours, the constant flashing (he had to replace the batteries in his camera half way through the day) started to set off a migraine. Silly kid. He keeps taking pictures of me and telling me I'm beautiful and then shows me the face of someone much older and flabbier than I could possibly be and so I make him erase the pictures. The whole thing is quite tiring.

I managed to distract Gregory temporarily with weaving yarn.



I got him a couple cones of 10/2 Pearle cotton so he can try some of the intricate drafts he loves to pick out. Once we get the Internet actually working again, he will probably update his blog as well.

Gabrielle got her Christmas present a couple of months ago (her sewing machine) so there wasn't much for her under the tree today. We let her open the family presents her grandparents sent.



She handled the whole "limited presents thing" very well and in fact used her allowance to buy everyone else in the family a present. She maintained an "others" focus that was very sweet.

I gave Kurt the scarf I wove last week and I think he likes it.



He put on the scarf and the socks I knit for him immediately. With the sweltering heat, the woolen gifts seem out of place. It is hard to believe we were breaking ice off the windshields just a couple of days ago.

Kurt gave me a lovely gift today.



600 yards of textured alpaca yarn. He actually tracked down the one yarn store within 50 miles and bought me yarn. I love it. I'd like to weave it into a scarf I think and I'm wondering if I can use wool knitting yarn for warp. Like some Jaggerspun wool and silk lace-weight perhaps.

Mysteries

Broadband. Wow. What a great idea.

Kurt takes classes at the university and they expect students to access the Internet. Gregory and Gabrielle have a computer based curriculum which requires Internet research for projects. Dial-up made school more and more difficult for everyone. Excuse enough. A quick trip to our new super Wal-Mart brought wireless broadband Internet into our lives and we may never be the same. Right now we're still updating our computers. Nothing could be automatically updated with our slow Internet connection.

To celebrate our technological advancement, I updated my blog template. I started blogging in the beginning of time as far as blog technology is concerned. So many advancements had been made since then. I generally don't like change, at least not since Hurricane Ivan made me deal with so many changes all at once, but I like this change. But change brings struggle and I keep struggling to figure out how to make things work. My blog template now makes things easy yet I only know how to work with the html I needed before. More growth and learning are in store I suppose.

I've been knitting mysteries lately. I finished both of my MS4 stoles and have blocked one of them.



It is pretty enough. It is quite long and plenty wide for a stole so I might actually wear this one. The color is lovely and I like the beads.



I have a hard time adequately photographing lace. It can be challenging to display it and not photograph little messes around the house at the same time. Oh well.

I finished another mystery too. I'm not sure what I was thinking as I knit Kurt's Christmas socks.



But my husband does not have big feet. These socks are a good 2 inches too long. I knit these while boiling cane juice into syrup and perhaps the fumes affected my judgment. Or perhaps the Lord thought my brother David in bible college in Germany needed them more. (He has big feet.) I had planned to make socks for my brother and worried about having enough matching yarn. I had actually selected some other yarn for his socks. But now it looks like the problem is solved and I am finished.