Friday Post

Boy, did I ever sleep in today!

The boys didn't have weight lifting/pt at the school today (it ran the full summer for the football kids) , so we use Fridays as our crash day. I took one of the boys to the doctor because he has been complaining about his leg hurting. I was afraid he had pulled something during practices and definitely didn't want him to be out the entire season by making it worse. Turns out he has a quad (?) strain--that means he will have to lay off the lower body conditioning for a week, then the doctor will decide if we need to do physical therapy to get it worked out. Chances are that just letting it rest will do the trick though.



What do you have planned for the weekend? I am planning to take a crochet class at Twist this Saturday so I can finally help customers that come into the store with a crochet question. Usually I have to hand those questions off to Shelly but I think it would be nice if I could actually be able to handle them.

Sunday we are running to Agra for my niece's b-day. My mom in law and I usually go to Texas for my niece and nephew's b-day, but this year my sister in law and her family are coming to Oklahoma. I am off to search for something pink with lots of sparkles tomorrow. That's my girl!



As far as my pledge to not buy anything new for the next 2 months, that has kind of crashed and burned. I bought 4 (YES 4) skeins of Lorna's Lace's sock yarn while I was at the Newton Beadery. Candice had ordered the neatest colorway that just had to be adopted. I am crazy about the red, yellow and blues in the Lorikeet colorway, so I had to have it. I also picked up a couple skeins of Cascade Venezia to make a shawl. One of the skeins and I had a run in last night and I spent a considerable amount of time having to untangle the mess. You know it is not going to end well when you pull from a center pull ball and half the ball pulls out. I can't even BEGIN to tell you how much fun that was. NOT. Let's just say there is a REASON I do not try to help with untangling yarn at the shops! All's well that ends well doesn't apply to the mental scarring that occurs if I have a role in untangling yarn...

And along with yarn from The Newton Beadery, I bought volumes 1 and 3 of Barbara Walker's stitch dictionaries from Twist Yarn Shop. The sheer number of patterns in book 1 (500!!!) is mind boggling. These books are more of an investment than most stitch dictionaries, but I haven't found any dictionary that comes even close to the depth and clarity of these. They will more than pay for themselves in a very short time. Book 3 is mainly charted patterns with a really good tutorial. I have completely fallen in love with a charted raised spider pattern in this book. Wouldn't that be awesome to have a spider relief on your back shoulder or right over your heart? I know, that sounds strange--but I think it would be really neat. I am a little twisted that way. I want a sweater in red Alpaca With A Twist yarn, in a simple stockinette body style so the spider just pops out at you.

It has struck me that it would be good to learn to knit from charts since I noticed there are more knitters that are bringing in charts. Shelly gracefully volunteered to work through some of the charts with me, so I hope she doesn't mind if I take her up on the offer.

2008 is going to be my year for learning and growing in my knitting comfort zone. I am also trying to get UFO's done and frogging half done projects that are not going to be worked on for a while. Ideally I would like to have a maximum of two projects going at any point. Right now I have several that I started and put down...Into the frog pond they go! I am going to finish the shawl and the North Hampton wools sweater (the boys are looking forward to wearing this) before I work on anything else...ideally. I am not promising to not have a sock project on the needles at all times--I usually do. However, I am going to make an effort to get things completed so I can actually have things to show for my efforts.