Take that, Barbara Walker!!!!

Being that I am a hippie-new age-metaphysical kind of girl, it is only natural that I would want to knit a peace symbol, right? Afterall, I felt it necessary to make a peace symbol sand sculpture at the beach. Upon surfing the net, I managed to find such a thing. The pattern is in Barbara Walker's Treasure of Charted Knitting Designs. I was able to actually find the chart for it posted on the net, but wasn't able to get anywhere with it even with a key chart for what the symbols are. I went to the library and reserved the book. Now, apparently, when one reserves a book from the library and they need to contact another library to actually get the book, they call up Kevin Costner and ask him to act in his role in The Postman and send the message of the book request by horseback. No, no. That can't be right. You would actually get the book quicker that way. They contact Kevin Costner, and have him WALK the request to the library that actually has the book. Needless to say, it took two weeks to get the book to my local library. And guess what? I was on vacation when it got there. Now, it takes two weeks for them to get the book, but they only give you 48 hours to pick it up before they send Kevin Costner back into suburbia with the book. I did have the foresight that this might happen, though, and left my handy dandy library card with my neighbor who picked it up for me. So, I have been wrestling with this pattern. I swear this woman is related to Ann Budd( who has a warped sense of humore in heel turning) and that both Barbara Walker and Ann Budd work directly for the Dark Prince of knitting insanity. In the book, she has charts galore and a few written out patterns. I tried to match the written out instructions with the charts and make some kind of sense of it all. It only got me so far. So, what I did was take the vague instructions she provided and used my own sense of creativity to come up with the finished product. I stayed up til like 1am while I watched Animal Planet, determined to see it to the finish. (My hubby fell asleep with remote in a death grip in his hands and that's the show that came on. However, I'm not complaining too much. Perhaps it was that bit on naked mole rates that helped me speed the deciphering along.) The completed peace symbol is a bit rough around the edges, considering my own creative interpretation but I think I can tidy it up a bit on the real deal. The thing is..... I have bested you, Barbara Walker! HA! Take that. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. After completing the knitted piece, I did the Evan Almighty dance. Who's the knitter now, huh? I'm bad, yah, I'm a bad mama jamma allright.
I did have the smarts to write out what I was doing as I was deciphering the peace symbol and once I tidy it up a bit, I will post it here to share with all the other hippie knitters. I don't think I'm infringing on any copyright laws since the symbols Ms. Walker was suggesting that I do were not at all what I actually did.
Peace Out!
Namaste!

all we are saying is give peace a chance

Back from vacation. It was nice to be away from work and from the daily grind, but after a week cooped up with the three kids in a pop up camper at Cape San Blas, I was ready to come back home. I did do some knitting while there (mostly on the drive down and back). I tried to work on my husband's second sock but since it requires a small amount of counting, I soon found out it was pointless to try to work on it. It seems whenever you are counting while knitting, that is when everybody wants to ask you stuff. I did work on my stepdaughter's tank dress and hope to take a picture of its progress thus far. I worked on a nashua baby sweater pattern (its just so dang cute that I want to make a version of it for myself), started on a demise baby gown... and that's pretty much it. I did a little reading (Friday Night Knit Club), and on the next to the last day I decided to put my artistic side to use and made some sand sculptures. The first thing that came to mind was the peace sign and then because I seem to have this painting obsession (check out my karmaandkismet cafe press site if you don't believe me) with dragonflies, I decided to make a sand dragonfly. I had a hard time getting the sand around it leveled out in the short amount of time I had. My oldest son is posing by it in the picture to get a feel for the dimensions of the piece. I got a lot of sand in my drawers during the making of it!!!
I had ordered a Debbie Bliss baby book used through Amazon and after 20 days its finally here....water soaked. The idiot postman left it out in the thunderstorm on the front porch. I haven't even gotten to take it in the tub and look at it and soak it my own self. It was supposed to be new but it sure doesn't look it. I'm waiting for it to dry out before I really take a good gander at it, but in the brief thumb-through it looked like it had some really cool pieces to it.
I also got the Charted Knits book from the library that has that stupid cabled peace symbol design in it. I swear the woman who wrote it is in cahoots with Ann Budd (who I think comes up with some really cool designs but writes them so they are damn near impossible to figure out. I turned one of her evil heels 15 times once before I gave up and turned the heel my own damn way). I cannot read her charted instructions and am having to use the written ones and kind of guess what she wants me to do with the three inner lines that make up the middle of the peace symbol. I am, however, determined to figure this out and will proudly post the swatch when I have bested this evil woman's design.

Rob Thomas baby hat (aka... I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell..."

This is a baby hat that I made for a coworker of mine that is fixin to have a baby. I'm in the process of knitting her a sweater, but since its a work in progress of my own design and sometimes frustration, I figured I had to give her SOMETHING hand knit for her little baby boy. The hat reminds me of something that Rob Thomas (extreme cool guy that he is) would wear.
Being that I've been going crazy this weekend between dealing with fighting kids, trying to get ready for our camping trip, and getting ready for working at the Rock over the weekend, I couldn't help think of the Matchbox 20 song that goes, "i'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell. I know right now you can't tell...." Get it? I've been going a bit crazy this weekend and the hat reminds me of Rob Thomas. Get it now? See?
I knit the thing with Lion Brand Homespun which I am convinced is an evil, evil yarn. I do like the way it looks when you get done fighting with it, though, and against better common sense, I have bought the colors barley, roccoco, ranch, and baroque (the very colors I made this hat with) to make a striped cardigan that I saw in a book that was made with cotton and on much smaller needles, in similar colors that was the inspiration for my masoquistic endeavors to take on this homespun project. I have several other works in progress and in the wings so its not like I'm going to start working on it tomorrow or anything.
Anyhow, this will be my last blog before I head for vacation. I hope to get a little bit of knitting but am not sure how realistic that will be with the kids along. HOWEVER, I do go on a bit of a vacation with my husband in July (get this.... he's going for business and will be gone a good part of the day where I can lay around and read and knit and then he'll come home just in time for me to take a break from the knitting, take me out to supper, come home for some conjugal visitation, and go to bed. What a wickedly perfect set up!!!!). Now that's a vacation I'm looking forward to!!!!

no wisdom here

I had a wisdom tooth removed yesterday. It was supposed to be no big deal, but it took the dentist 2 and a half hours to dig it out of my head. Needless to say, I'm not feeling real perky and the left side of my face looks akin to Eric Stoltz when he played that kid in the movie Mask. I have to go pick my kiddos up in a few hours from their last day of school, so right now the heavy duty drugs are out. I even called in sick today. I know, I'm such a slacker.
In my post extraction, drug-induced state of being yesterday, I finished my contribution to operation fuzzy toes. I didn't mind doing the sock. It had a nice little flow to it once you got into it. It was just enough patterning to keep you interested, but mindless enough that you didn't have to look at the pattern until you were ready to make a heel flap or do decreases. I do, however, get in this state of mind when I am nearing the end of a project. I no longer am really enjoying the project, but instead, feel a driveness to get the thing finished. I can work on something for like 2 years, but as I'm getting ready to join shoulders or decrease a toe, I go into a mode where I can work on nothing else until I get it completed.... including weaving in loose ends. Its done now and I even worked a mini toe-up sock to see if I could actually do it. The ankles are a bit puffy (kind of looks like a postpartum woman who had been on a lot of pitocin and who had PIH to boot!) and I feel like I did too many decreases before working the cuff, but it will give me some ideas for my next big sock project at hand. So, forgive me for any typos or incorrect grammar. The left side of my face is throbbing and my beloved TingTing is trying to take care of me in the best way a kitty knows how(which includes sticking her fluffy butt in my face as I am trying to type. Apparently it must be a time -honored ancient kitty tradition passed down from cat to cat to take care of one's human by constantly sticking the feline butt in the human face.)
Well, its back to the couch for me and my chipmunk cheek.......... (and most likely my overprotective kitty)