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happy day after valentines day

I forgot to mention that I went to see a great show on Wednesday night. I saw Houdini the Musical at the Saidye – whoops, I mean at the Segal Center for the Arts. I met up with a bunch of moms from Jakob’s playgroup, and I brought my mom, and it was so much fun! Our tickets included a “petit souper” (light supper in hors d-oeuvre form) and wine and a raffle. Oh yeah, and I won a prize! $50 gift certificate at a local spa. That will be fun! It was strange seeing these women without our kids but it was so nice to have a little time together as grown ups. We HAVE to do it more often!

Here’s yesterday’s progress on the Silk Rumple. Everything from the orange marker is new. I feel like all these photos look alike, because it is growing so slowly! At least the first ball is showing signs of depletion (the single skein turned out to be 2 smaller ones together).
And here’s the progress on the Noro striped scarf. 144 rows as of last night’s TV watching marathon. Speaking of last night’s TV- any one else super annoyed with which team won on Celebrity Apprentice? Piers or Omarosa need to go home!
In other reality TV complaints- I find I’m kinda irritated at Big Brother for splitting up the real life couple with other “soulmates”. I know they probably did it on purpose to try and trigger some drama, but I still think it’s tacky.


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754…

This is my 754th post. I am thinking about running a contest in my 777th post. At the rate I post, that would end up being somewhere towards the end of March, I think. Hmm…

No photos yet. Mainly because the camera is downstairs and I’m lazy, but also because there are no new photos to show. I am going to knit more stripes and hopefully will have something to show for it later tonight.


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a contest!

Dianne is having a contest over on her blog, and is looking for your favorite tips or techniques.  Here’s one of mine!

One of my favorite knitting tips that makes my knitting life easier is how to calculate how much yarn you’ll need for a long-tail cast-on. How many times have you ended up with a tail that is much too long, or run out right towards the end? Here’s an easy way to know how much yarn you need:
Let’s say you need to cast on 100 sts. Cast on 10 sts then unravel your cast on and see how much yarn it took. Multiply that length by 10 (10 x 10 = 100) and that will show what length yarn you need. Add a few inches for weaving in (or a longer length for seaming, if necessary), and that’s it!

(Obviously you need to multiply the 10-st-co length by whatever number it will take to give you the number of sts YOU need to cast on).

(If you decide to enter, please leave in the comments that I referred you. Thanks!)


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happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy 10th birthday dear knitting guild, happy birthday to you

First of all, a big apology to those of you who get here directly via http://www.jeloca.com/. I’m sorry it appeared as if my blog had gone bye-bye. Apparently my domain-forwarding-provider decided that since they never sent me a renewal contract, I clearly must no longer be desiring their services, so they dropped me like a hot potato. I swear our phone call went like this:
Me: How come my website isn’t working?
Them: Because you haven’t paid for it.
Me: Well, you never sent me an invoice.
Them: We don’t send invoices until after you pay.
Me: If you don’t send me an invoice, how am I supposed to know it’s time to pay again?
Them: Well, we don’t send invoices until after you pay. Your payment was due in January.
Me: How did you expect me to know that you wanted more money in January?
Them: We sent you an email in December to tell you.
Me: I never got it.
Them: You probably didn’t check your email.
Me: I check my email about 15 times a day. I didn’t get it.
Them: We’re sure it was sent out.
Me: Can you check?
Them: No. The emails are all sent out autmatically and are generated by our system. We can’t check to see who got them. They were sent in December.
Me: But I never got it.
And so on. Ugh…At least everyone is happy now. They have my money, I have a blog that works, and you don’t have to finagle your way here via the http://www.jeloca.blogspot.com/ address. It’s all good.
There was hardly any knitting today, and I might do a few more rows on the Striped Scarf before bed, so I’m saving my row count for tomorrow. Tonight was the 10th anniversary party of the Montreal Knitting Guild, and it was a potluck event. There was so much food! I ate much too much, and knit much too little.
I do have a photo of that Marble Cabled Hoodie thing I mentioned the other day. I’m about 10 rows farther than this, but I’ve put it aside to try and finish the Striped Scarf instead.
Instead of stripes, I leave you with a tutorial on how to eat toast.


Step 1: get toast into mouth


Step 2: get toast into mouth

Step 3: get toast into mouth
Step 4: get toast into mouth
Step 5: grin with accomplishment (and toast in mouth)
Step 6: pose for the camera


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a reprieve

I feel like I’ve been granted a stay of execution!

I was supposed to return to work tomorrow. Maternity leave- over. Real world- commence.

Then I got a letter in the mail this morning advising me that my maternity benefits will be ending on February 16th (Friday). Which means I don’t go back to work until NEXT Tuesday.

There was much happy dancing done in this house!

Back to knitting- no news on the striped scarf or the silk Rumple shawl, as neither were touched all weekend. Instead I cast on for a hooded cardigan for Jakob with some lovely soft blue/gray Marble yarn, and am about 1/3 done with the back. I had hoped to finish more over the weekend but somehow I ended up with only about an hour to knit each day. I have photos but they are on my camera, which is downstairs. Since I’m very tired, downstairs seems really far away right now.


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thursday’s stuff

Mommy with Jakob at 38 weeks. One more week and he’ll be at the same number of weeks of my pregnancy he was born at (he was delivered at 39 weeks).
The next photo isn’t the most flattering of me, but I have to share it.
Jakob gives kisses. It’s the cutest thing ever- he actually takes your face in his hands and plants one on you. It’s usually open-mouthed, and mostly slobber-covered, and occassionally he bites, but they are kisses just the same. Sometimes he grabs me for a kiss at least 10 times in 3 minutes, and if I don’t get my face up to his fast enough, he grabs me by my hair and pulls me to him. We were at my cousins’ store this afternoon and Amy caught this photo of him kissing me.
He’s so delicious!
She also caught a photo of his other latest thing:


He waves!


I forgot to post this yesterday, but last night Yannick helped me wind these two skeins of Woolly Bully by hand. Um, yeah. Two skeins. This is a case (Maaike) where a yarn purchase ISN’T a yarn purchase. I already HAD one skein, so I only bought a second one so I’d have enough to make something worthy of it. (I asked Yannick, he said it was ok). 🙂 These balls are huge! Each one is the size of a cabbage!

Here’s the latest on the Silk Rumple shawl. Again, everything from the orange pin (on the right) and up is the new stuff from today.
And finally, here’s tonight’s final view of the striped scarf. I’m at 118 stripes, but realized this am that it doesn’t really matter if I beat Maaike in the stripe count unless I beat her by a lot. I have only 41 sts per row, whereas she has 45. So for example, last night she’d knit 92 or so stripes and had finished the first 2 balls, but I’d knit 98 and needed another 10 or so stripes to finish them. I finally finished mine, though, and am about 10 stripes into the new balls. This officially makes me more than halfway through!


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thursday’s stuff

Mommy with Jakob at 38 weeks. One more week and he’ll be at the same number of weeks of my pregnancy he was born at (he was delivered at 39 weeks).
The next photo isn’t the most flattering of me, but I have to share it.
Jakob gives kisses. It’s the cutest thing ever- he actually takes your face in his hands and plants one on you. It’s usually open-mouthed, and mostly slobber-covered, and occassionally he bites, but they are kisses just the same. Sometimes he grabs me for a kiss at least 10 times in 3 minutes, and if I don’t get my face up to his fast enough, he grabs me by my hair and pulls me to him. We were at my cousins’ store this afternoon and Amy caught this photo of him kissing me.
He’s so delicious!
She also caught a photo of his other latest thing:


He waves!


I forgot to post this yesterday, but last night Yannick helped me wind these two skeins of Woolly Bully by hand. Um, yeah. Two skeins. This is a case (Maaike) where a yarn purchase ISN’T a yarn purchase. I already HAD one skein, so I only bought a second one so I’d have enough to make something worthy of it. (I asked Yannick, he said it was ok). 🙂 These balls are huge! Each one is the size of a cabbage!

Here’s the latest on the Silk Rumple shawl. Again, everything from the orange pin (on the right) and up is the new stuff from today.
And finally, here’s tonight’s final view of the striped scarf. I’m at 118 stripes, but realized this am that it doesn’t really matter if I beat Maaike in the stripe count unless I beat her by a lot. I have only 41 sts per row, whereas she has 45. So for example, last night she’d knit 92 or so stripes and had finished the first 2 balls, but I’d knit 98 and needed another 10 or so stripes to finish them. I finally finished mine, though, and am about 10 stripes into the new balls. This officially makes me more than halfway through!


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this is for wednesday

98 stripes done. I really wanted to finish the first 2 balls last night- do you see how little is left? But at around 11:30 I just got too zonked. I couldn’t do it. I gave up and went to bed. Hopefully tonight’s progress will delve into the 2 new balls!

p.s. Jakob waved for the first time today! We were at my LYS and the owner and some of the staff waved and said “bye bye” as we were leaving, and Jakob waved back! Then later he did it to a stranger too. It was the first time he’d even ever tried, and I almost started bawling in the store, I was so shocked. :}


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title goes here

I would have posted this last night but I went to bed too late and was too tired. Just pretend you are reading this last night. If it helps, you can go put your jammies back on, brush your teeth, take out your contact lenses, then come back.

Yesterday we went to my friend Maia’s house for a mini-playgroup. I know you can’t tell by these photos but there were other babies there! I think we were about 7 or 8 moms, plus 1 extra baby (Maia has twin boys).

Jakob had a blast pulling her foam alphabet mat apart. I MUST get him one of these, it entertained him for so long!

He would pull off a square and then separate the letter from the background.

Of course, eating them was fun too! I also want to get that pig she has- when you turn it on, one ear flicks and the jaw works back and forth grumbling and talking about eating some nice slop. It’s too cute!
So my hubby came home with some yarn yesterday. I asked him what he was trying to get out of. He swears it was just an “I was thinking about you” gift. Cue the “awwww”. 🙂 The yarn is Estelle’s Woolly Bully, and this one skein is freaking HUGE!
Seriously- that coke can is included for scale. This is BIG. I don’t know what I’m going to make with it yet. I love the colors and it is really soft. The thing is, I’m currently in the middle of 2 scarves, plus I have a half-finished Clapotis somewhere. I don’t need 4 scarves (especially since I’ve made it this far in the winter without wearing even one), so I think I’ll swatch it for a bit and maybe try to design something with it.
Here’s yesterday’s progress on the Silk Rumple shawl. Everything from the orange pin and up is new. It’s slow-going, but I only worked on it for an hour yesterday.
Here’s the Noro scarf progress. I took a quick count last night, I think I’m at 78 stripes completed. I’m also thisclose to finishing the first 2 balls which means I’m almost halfway done!

Today we only have some errands to do once Jakob wakes up from his nap, so I hope to have much more progress to show off tonight.


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don’t bother me, i’ll be reading

I have six minutes to sqeeze out a post. (That sounds vaguely dirty…) I promised Yannick I’d meet him in bed at 12:30. No you pervs, not for that. We still haven’t finished reading the last Harry Potter, and I have so far remained remarkably unspoiled in terms of who dies, etc. I did find out one little tidbit by accident (if “by accident” includes reading Stephen King’s column on the last page of my EW magazine where he blurted something out), and that tidbit, for those of you who have read it, implies that…oh how can I put this for the unspoiled? It implies that one of the characters had a lot in common with the original actor who portrays him/her in the movies. Is that vague enough?

I had to share this with you.
Isn’t that cool? A HABS holiday decoration! I kept meaning to blog about it, and when over at Maaike’s on Saturday I snuck a quick photo. If you go over to her blog to comment on it, send some love over to her hubby who made it!

I didn’t post my stripe tally over the weekend because I had none. Yannick’s parents came over Saturday morning and we spend the day putting up new window treatments in the bedrooms and preparing the heated floor for our (eventual) den, then they slept over that night. Sunday I didn’t get any knitting done either, as in the morning we had swimming lessons, then around lunch time Julie and Rich came over with adorable little Kayla, and then we had plans later that night.

Sunday afternoon Jakob was being really kvetchy and his toys weren’t holding his interest. Out of desperation I popped in a Baby Mozart dvd. Think he liked it? He didn’t move from that pose for the entire video, except to laugh out loud every so often and turn to look at me as if to say “did you see that?”. It was too cute. I know I’m going to have to stop keeping the tv on for me soon, as he constantly turns to see the moving shapes and colors, and I don’t want him watching once he’s old enough to understand what he sees. But I approve of the videos and I don’t mind him watching those. He was never able to sit through a whole half hour, so I only played each of the 3 videos we have once or twice each. Now that he pays attention and enjoys it, I think I’m going to sit with him maybe once a week and watch it together.
On Friday I re-started an old project. Remember the Silk Rumple from HandMaiden that Yannick bought for me? I was having a hell of a time trying to knit the shawl on the label, because none of my needles were sharp enough for the k2togs in the boucle-y yarn. I had even bought needles with special “precision points” but they were too blunt. On Saturday I gave Maaike’s Options needles a spin, and they worked perfectly! I am now able to whip through a yo, k2tog row almost as fast as a regular k row.

This is where I am as of this afternoon. I only work on this project during the day when Yannick isn’t around. Last week when Maaike and I started our Noro scarves, I mentioned to Yannick that I was working on a cool scarf. He asked “is that the one with the yarn I bought you?” I felt bad that his yarn was still sitting in the project bin, so I decided to work on it behind his back so I can surprise him one day soon by wearing the finished shawl and praising him on his taste.

This closeup shows off the subtle color variations and the stitch pattern. It isn’t actually supposed to have a wavy bottom, but I was feeling too lazy to weave another needle in the bottom edge to hold it straight, so this is the result of my quick pinning-for-the-photo job.

 

This closeup shows the texture of the yarn. Now do you see why I needed sharp needles? I was almost getting nauseous at the “stuttering” effect those yo, k2tog rows were having on me. I’m used to knitting in a rhythm, and those rows were throwing off my groove.

Finally, here’s my Noro Striped Scarf progress as of tonight. I’m laughing at myself because on Friday Maaike told me she had 74 stripes knit, and then she didn’t get a chance to knit at all over the weekend, and she let me know today that she didn’t knit today either. So she’s stalled at 74. I knit my fingers off from 8-11:30pm tonight while watching my tapes and when I finally called it quits I counted up my stripes- I have 73 done! Yet again I could force myself to sit there and do just a few more stripes to be in the lead, but I’m not. I’ll let her think she’s winning…for now. 🙂

p.s. as you can see by the time this post records it was posted at, I didn’t come close to being done by 12:30. We’re going to put the reading off ’til tomorrow. I’m aware that now my post title makes no sense, but I’m too tired to fix it.