I'd like it to be known, that I, Gwen, went to the gym today, even though I was stood up by Carmen, who was supposed to be my gym buddy. Carmen, I want you to know that I rode an exercise bike for 20 minutes and I'm just that much closer to my silk yarn. :-)

Work continues on February socks. I'm working on the upper leg ribbing and it will probably be finished. I would have finished tonight, but I worked late and then went to the gym...which takes a suprisingly long time after you find a place to park, go in, change clothes, work out for 20 minutes, collect your work clothes and then leave. It's an hour long process...

It snowed in good ol'KC today. It wasn't the big fluffy flakes. It was little tiny ones. It was still dangerous enough to cause a 35 car pile-up. For once, glad I was still at work.

It's amazing how fast socks knit up on size 2 needles after you've been
knitting socks on size 0s. Behold the February sock in all it's glory. I'm about a half inch away from putting on the green cuff. Not bad for 3 days knitting. February socks should not be so bad to finish.





Best thing I've learned recently...how to weave your ends in as you go along. Fabulous!!! These socks have lots of ends to weave in and my secret project has lots of ends to weave in.

So, a wonderful person gave me a gift certificate to Amazon.com for my birthday. I'm looking for a good book of toddler/baby knits out there to get. I have the Debbie Bliss Quick Baby knits...which aren't very quick at all considering their size. I made the ballet sweater and it took forever and I got sick of all the fiddly instructions. So, if there are any suggestions out there, I'm trying to make a decision because the gift certificate is burning a whole in my virtual pocket. :-)

So, I've decided that I'll do Johanna's 2007 Sock Challenge to knit a pair of socks a month. Below, we have the finished socks!
Details: Mountain Colors Bearfoot sock yarn in Wild Raspberry. Done toe up using my generic sock pattern with a short row heel. 2x2 rib pattern which gives it a little texture and lets the amazing yarn speak for itself. I love them so much, I wore them today to Carmen's Premier jewelry party. They were greatly admired. My one regret, the lace top I wanted to do didn't work out. :-( But I love, love the socks anyway. I think they're my new favorites.

Since I finished January socks, I decided to start some February socks...which look surprisingly similar to some I made my sister
for x-mas this year, but with the colors inverted. I loved how well
they turned out for her, I decided to make a pair for myself as well. Pink for Valentine's day. Pink & Green, the colors of spring which I hope are not too far in the future, because I'm seriously tired of scraping my car windows every morning...

I'd like to announce, that I am a card carrying gym member...or at least I will be when they send it to me, until then I have a little fake one. I learned a lesson in gym economics today whereby it's almost the same price to pre-pay an entire year as it is to pay the joining fee and and pay monthly fees. I paid the entire year. I have joined a gym before and did the same thing and I used it because I had paid for it. I hate to waste money more than I hate going to the gym.

Since I was in such a spending mood, I went to Target to buy some things I've needed and groceries (yes, we have Super Targets with grocery stores). That was an expensive trip as well.

In knitting news, I've got sock 2 up to the point where I need to begin
the lace section. I just absolutely love these socks.

There was no knitting tonight. No, tonight I got my hands on a copy of Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich. Yes, I spent the evening immersed in the crazy world of Stephanie Plum and the super hot Morelli and Ranger. I go back and forth on whether or not I'm for Morelli or Ranger. Ranger'd be fun for the short term, and I do mean fun, but would drive me crazy in the long run. I know there are some more groupies out there. Who's your love?

In other news, in my on-going quest to keep my new year's resolutions, I made an appointment with 24 Hour Fitness on Saturday morning. Or rather, I should say Carmen had both the sales guy and her trainer call me to make sure I would make an appointment. And truthfully, I'm glad she did because I've wanted a hair cut for over 2 months and the reason I haven't had one is I can't find the time to call during business hours to make an appointment. I need a keeper. The intent of joining the gym is #1 If I'm paying the money, I'm sure as heck going to get my money's worth and #2 to improve my general overall fitness. No body building. No rabid fitness, but to work up to 30 minutes of fitness activity 3-4 times a week. No fantasy's of great weight loss. This is just for me. So, I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm back...mostly. After a whirlwind trip to St. Louis and a terrible case of the flu, things are looking up today. For those who doubt me, I did stay home from work on Monday when I was really yucky. I felt mostly better today, so I went to work. Although, I will admit to getting up, showing and even getting dressed on Monday before deciding that it just wasn't going to happen...

I got some really great stuff for my birthday. I got a sweater and 2 shirts, some awesome mugs, some cool fleece artist earrings from my aunt. My niece helped me open all of my gifts. I'd pick up a gift. She'd ask "Me???" We'd open it. She'd realize it wasn't for her and go right to the next gift. We didn't leave her disappointed though, the very last gift was indeed for "Me???" We bought her a magnetic Dora book to play with. She was happy after that. I had a very good weekend, other than the fact that Typhoid Mary (aka my niece) managed to get one more victim of her terrible flu before I left.

I did get some knitting done this weekend. I knit on the mysterious peach knitting project, which is coming along nicely. I also worked on these socks.

They are Mountain colors Bearfoot in the Wild Raspberry colorway. I love, love, love this yarn. Right now, they don't look like anything other than ribbed socks, but you'll notice sock #1 is still on needles. I like this Drops pattern, but it has you do the lace separately and then seam it on to the top of the sock. Those of you who know me well know that seaming is one of the things I dislike most in life. So, I figured why couldn't I just knit the socks toe up and then knit the lace onto it. So, I'm going to finish sock #2 and then attempt to knit the lace onto to top of the socks. At the very least, I have 2 pairs of ribbed socks and I could have some very cool socks if this works. Also, the Mountain colors yarn has a bit less yardage to it than most, so I want to make sure I have enough yarn left to do the lace.

In one of those maybe the world is finally coming along, but gee how weird moments, I was looking at usatoday.com today and I noticed that they had 2 new knitting books featured, Knitting Circle and Friday Night Knitting Club. Since when did knitting fiction become the "IT" thing? They're even making a movie of one of them. Both of them sound interesting, so I might see if I can read one or both sometime in the future, but they both sound something along the lines of the Debbie Macomber books. Why can't someone find another interesting idea on knitting to write about other than tragedy that people get through via their knitting group? We're more than that!

Got the flu. Thought I was dying, but it appears I'm going to survive, thankfully. More later.

Day 5 of my birthday celebration

Yes, we are yet again celebrating my birthday. Today the family got together for my favorite meal. Homemade lasagna and Cherry Crumb Pie. Suberb!! I got lots of cool gifts from my family which I will enumerate later. I got a lot of help from my neice unwrapping my presents. There was even a present for her at the end. Heading home to KC tomorrow barring great amounts of snow that shut down the airport. I really wish I had bucked up for covered parking now...

Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

Happy Birthday to me!

Today is my official birthday. I slept late and then went to lunch with a friend who gifted me a pretty orange candle. I stopped by a yarn store to get some needles and bought myself a small birthday present of some sock yarn. Then I picked my mom up and we made dinner and went shopping. All in all a good day.

Day 3 of the birthday celebration

Well, I did manage not to open my birthday present from Beth until this morning. She got me the First and Second Treasure of Lace Knitting. Thanks Beth!!! You rock!

My flight to St. Louis was uneventful. My mom has the flu, which means about the time I have to go back to KC on Sunday, I should be struck down. If I'm sick, I'll pay the money to change my flight man. I tell you. I'm no martyr.

My mom gave me half an early birthday present as well. She's embroidering Pillowcases for me and they're covered in shoes. How cool is that??? I love my mom. She had one finished so she showed it to me.

The birthday continues...

I got a package this evening. It's from Amazon.com. It was sent by the Knitting Goddess, Beth. I haven't opened it yet. It's not my birthday. I'm going to attempt to wait to open it until tomorrow morning before I go to work. (I can't see taking it all the way to St. Louis with my for my birthday on Friday and I know I can't wait until Sunday). If I can't sleep from curiousity, I will be opening...

I measured my swatch this evening. It's going to work. I'm going to make Arwen's Cardigan from the last Interweave in some Classic Elite 03 Tweed I have in my stash. Yarn is soft once washed. It will hold the cable definition well. Hurrah!!! I'm going to start it when I get back from St. Louis next week.

Happy Early birthday to me.

I just love it when birthday celebrations last over several days. My birthday celebration started this evening. With coffee knitting & cake with several
good friends. A party most of us carried over to the local Macaroni Grill for some dinner. Thanks to Carmen for planning this wonderful get together to celebrate my birthday and Joanna's birthday. Joanna's birthday is on Thursday and my birthday is on friday. I won't tell you how old I am, but I'm now celebrating double digit anniversaries of my 21st birthday. Thanks to Carmen and Bev for the fantastic birthday gifts. Carmen, knows me very well, as
exemplified by the shoe-tastic package. Lots of awesome shoe paper. I'm taking some of it to work. My co-workers are going to think I'm insane with all the shoe notes (because I live by the organization by tiny notes theory.) Also, some beautiful Patons Kroy Sock yarn. I'm thinking I might try some mittens with it. And, of course, some house music. Thanks to everyone for making the start of my birthday celebration fantastic. I'm going home to St. Louis for the weekend so I can have some lasagna. Yumm!

Sometimes the quest for organization leads you to some realizations that are quite shocking...such as I have more than 22 miles worth of yarn. That's right...over 40,000 yards of yarn. I don't know about you, but I was quite shocked. I had to take a 4hour nap yesterday to recover. (actually, I took a shower laid on my bed for a "minute" and woke up 4 hours later, but who's counting...)

This morning I woke up reinvigorated in my quest to shorten my stash of yarn. I swatched for an cabled sweater. Yes, I know those works are shocking, but yes, I did a real swatch. One I washed and is currently drying on my blocking board. You can all pick yourselves up off the floor now.

After I finished the swatch and because I'm waiting for it to dry before measuring it again, I started a mystery project. Again, using yarn in my stash. Yippee!! It's going along fantastically. It's using Schachenmayer Micro Big Shine yarn. I like the finished product it produces, but it splits something terrible. So that's slowing me down a little bit. All in all a good weekend. I catalogued my stash, took a nap, cleaned and did laundry.

Now, what are the odds that my car is iced frozen for tomorrow morning??? I was afraid to even try it today since it was still raining/sleeting off and on all day long.

Flush from my success with the baby blanket and baby hat, I recast on for
slipstitch rainbow socks. In my zeal not to have socks that are too big for my feet, I cast on too few stitches and made it a bit to small around...55 stitches on size 0 needles...ummm...don't know what I was thinking...quite obviously I was not, so now the stitches are at a much more reasonable number. It fits pretty good and wonder of all wonder, it's still rainbow striping on the slip stitch. I'm going to like these!

Since the weather here this weekend is going to turn very cold and icy, I felt
the need to cast on for a hat. I think I have enough Aurora 8 left from the hat I made for my brother to make one in reverse colors. Although it's going to be very close. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed.

A second finished object of the year. A very cute baby hat to accompany the baby blanket for my sister to give to her friend. It's so cute! I love it. Instead of the rolled rim like the one I made for my neice, this one has a 1X1 rib. Still absolutely adorable if I do say so myself.

Now, if I only knew what I wanted to start next....

I started making a baby hat from the left over yarn I have. Nothing fancy. Just a little hat because I had left over yarn. I'm only about an inch into it so far. I'll post pictures when I'm done.

I also restarted the rainbow socks. I added several more stitches and I think that will work better. I frogged the Mountain Colors socks yet again. I've lost the picking the correct pattern the first time around mojo...or maybe I've just become a better knitter and therefore a perfectionist... Hmmmm???

Other than that, I'm going to try to leave work by 5:30 tomorrow so I can go workout. I tried to do that Monday, but ended up working until 7pm. I'm going to have to continue to work on that...

A day for firsts

Ta Da!! The first finished object of the year. It's a baby blanket for one of
my sister's oldest friend. Made out of some unkown cotton boucle yarn bought at Stitches 3 years ago. There's a little left over. I might even make a hat to match. Hurrah!!




The other first...I went and worked out for the first time since coming to KC, not quite a year ago. Yeah Me!

Other than that, finally vacuumed up all the fake x-mas tree needles off the carpet, did dishes, laundry and went out to dinner with Carmen. All in all, not a bad Sunday. Oh, I took a short nap in there too. Stupid boring Sunday afternoon tv.

So far, I'm doing really well on my clean up something every day for 15 minutes resolution Unfortunately, for that me, this means things are getting worse before they're getting better. For example, while trying to clean up my desk, I decided to go through all my paperwork and organize the stuff I need to do my taxes. I also decided to clean out all of my x-mas Ummm. Yeah... Still need to shred a 5 inch stack of paperwork and I've emptied the shredder basket 3 times so far... But, in the long run, if I can keep this up, it will all be good.

I've also been knitting. I finished 6 more squares for my left-over sock yarn blanket. I've finished 30 squares now...of 378... I have 46 rows left on the green baby blanket I've been working on. I turned the heel on my rainbow socks, but I think I'm going to have to frog them because I made them too skinny around on the size 0 needles.

That's all the news, other than I bought new tennis shoes today...and some Mary Janes...well, they were on sale you can't blame me can you?

The X-mas redux. I forgot to take pictures of everyone in their gifts, but I did get a few. This cheeseball here is my younger brother in the hat I knit
him for Christmas this year. I loved that had so much I almost kept it for myself. I'll definitely have to knit another for me and maybe my dad if he wants one. Made one for my brother in-law too, except his was orange and blank. Jeff's was Black and red.

I finally started a new project for myself. Behold the rainbow socks. I
didn't necessarily intend for them to turn out in a rainbow pattern. I just wanted to stop the pooling, which had unitended and pretty cool results. The slipped stitches go in perfect ROYGBIV order. Pretty darn cool. I'm liking them and they're going pretty fast. Love that Tess' Super Sock yarn. I have only 1 more skein of it though, so I'll have to put that on the list for Stitches this year.

Also making great progress on the baby blanket for my sister's friend that
she has known since she was 5 years old. I wouldn't knit a blanket for many people, but Christy has been around my family for many, many years. It's a simple basketweave pattern that you can't really see in this picture. I've got about 90 more lines of it before I'm done. Hurrah! Other than that. I'm trying to decide what I'm going to start next...