always up to something...

Hard to believe, but my girls are nearly five and one, respectively. Tonight we took them over to Babies R Us for their birthday portraits.

( You will not regret clicking here... )

This is our second year participating in the walk for premature babies as members of Team Angel Emma. We were so saddened by the loss of our cousin Emma Christine in December 2006, and walk in the hope that no parents should ever have to lose a child to premature birth ever again.

We are blessed to have both of our daughters arrive safely close to full-term. Sadly, though, not every baby is so lucky as our two girls have been. In 2006, over 540,000 babies were born prematurely. Premature birth is the leading cause of newborn death and many life long disabilities. The funds we raise in the March for Babies support research that saves babies' lives.

If you sponsored us last year, thank you so much! Ainsley especially had a great time walking and earning your pledged support, learning a valuable lesson about giving back to her community. We appreciate your continued support, in whatever dollar amount you wish.

If you've not sponsored us before, won't you consider making a donation, however small? Every little bit helps!

To donate safely and securely online (and yes, they accept PayPal!), simply click on the link below:

My good friend mushmomgreen finished Caitie's blanket and gave it to me today at church. This photo just doesn't do it justice - it's awesome!



You can read all about it and see more photos of the front and back, as well as a special little surprise she made in her knitting blog.

Thanks so much, Laura!!!

Anyone else out there a beta tester for Ravelry? I just got in last night. My username is... the usual. ;)

My friend mushmomgreen is making a blanket for BabyMarr2.0 - it's no secret; I picked the one I wanted because I knew I could never make it, and she could.

She posted a funny story about making my blanket (as well as the one she made for wwpostergirl's baby) and I thought I'd post a link here for amusement and posterity. Be sure to read the text on both photos of the blanket. ;)

Thanks for the laugh, Laura. :)

ganked from Grumperina, a crafty meme:

What are your limits when it comes to creative pursuits? Mine, in alphabetical order:

4. Love it! This is my thing.

Knitting, photography, scrapbooking, writing.

3. I do or have dabbled in it.

Baking, calligraphy, card making, cooking, crochet, designing/pattern writing, embroidery and cross-stitch, flower arranging, gardening, jewelry making, needlepoint, papier-mâché, pattern editing, rug hooking, sewing, stamping.

2. I'll give it a try.

Balloon animal making, dyeing, felting, lace making (needle lace, cutwork), quilting, spinning (wheel or spindle), stuffed toy making, tatting, weaving, wood carving.

1. I've got absolutely no interest.

Appliqué, basket weaving, beading, book binding, candle making, collage, doll house making, etching, glass bead making, glass blowing, lucet, macramé, millinery, mosaics, pottery, origami, shibori, soap making, straw marquetry, string art.

Well, it's been over a year now, but I finally have my Birch shawl, which I started, ripped, started, ripped, etc. about 20 times before handing it over to the oh-so-talented mushmomgreen for her to enjoy. Not only did she finish it for me, she blocked it for me, too, since I borrowed her blocking wires with the honest intention of blocking it myself, but never got around to it and had to return them to her.

As anyone who has utterly failed at something like this can probably understand, at some point, the whole thing becomes less about the process of knitting or the challenge, and more about just wanting to own the darned shawl. I've never owned a lace shawl in my life, and now I do. Look at how pretty it is:





It's just lovely. I put it on over my tank dress at church yesterday after receiving it, and got many compliments, all of which I deflected of course to mushmomgreen.

Thank you so much!!!

Well, it was really tough, picking the winners here. I used a random number generator in Excel to pick the winners, and once someone won a prize, I tossed their name out of the running for more prizes. Sorry, but otherwise jamib would have won half of my yarn stash, and I just couldn't let that happen. :)

Here are the winners, twelve total:

jamib wins a ball of Lion Brand Trellis, as well as two balls of a hand-dyed, limited edition Motomo yarn (which ironically, she helped wind from skeins). She must make something for herself with these yarns. :)

Eleanor and Judy, both formers co-worker from WPI, wins a gift certificate to Bath & Body Works.

Debbie, another former co-worker from WPI, receives one ball of Berrocco's Foliage yarn (it's yummy).

Sheila from church will receive a ball of hand-dyed soft wool I picked up at a fair in New Hampshire. It's enough to make a scarf - I already did so with the other ball. :)

mushmomgreen, lucky dog, adds to her stash 2 skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in raspberry. She must also make something (socks?) for herself.

Pauline, a colleague of lcmed's, will receive a wax melting bowl set from At Home America, kindly donated by wwpostergirl. heidi_and_colin's grandmother-in-law, Betty, will also receive one of these.

signal_chick won herself a set of cards, handmade and donated by criminalgrace.

Joan Dickert (known in our house as Mrs. Sticker), wins two balls of Crazy Cotton in cute pastel colors perfect for making something for her granddaughter.

Lora, another former co-worker (I swear, this was random) picks up a ball of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino. I shall forward her a copy of knitty's "Fetching" to make with this yarn. :)

Finally, jgreeno wins a set of cards donated by xinie, which I will mail as soon as I receive them!

I hope all who won prizes are happy with them - I tried to match prizes according to frequency of knitting, and whether I thought you'd like something. To those who did not win, I can only say THANK YOU SO MUCH for your help and time and support.

The hats are going to be delivered to Baystate next Sunday afternoon, when the hospital will be hosting a memorial service for many of the families who have lost babies in the last year. I think that's very appropriate.

I've already been asked if this will be a yearly thing, and I'm honestly not sure if it will or not. We'll see. :)

The scene: This morning, while waiting in line at Dunkin' Donuts, I showed Ainsley the start of a three-season sweater I'm knitting for her. I had just started it last night, so I literally had about 1/2" of the ribbing done, and I wanted to see what she thought of the colors (the five variagated balls in the foreground of this picture, if you're curious)...

"Ainsley, I'm knitting a sweater for you. Do you like the colors?"

*pause*

"Yes, but it's a little small..."

Kids. True.

Since I posted the photos earlier this week, I've received a few more hats from the good folks in Rhode Island (thanks, guys!).

This brings our final total to 328* hats.

Updated, 3/17 - I found one that jamib had made and misplaced. Appparently Ainsley has been amassing quite the collection of random things she picks up around the house and hides in bags in her room...

Congratulations and thank you to all of you!

Prizes and winners to be announced next week - stay tuned!

Well, the deadline has come and gone, and we've got nearly all the hats. As far as I know, the only hats I don't have right now are the ones from jgreeno and company (No, they haven't arrived yet - I hope you didn't send them by Pony Express!!!)

I've been so overwhelmed by everyone's support and generosity in this endeavour - when I started this, I never imagined I'd be trying to find a box big enough to hold 300+! Here are some highlights:

• wwpostergirl found time in her busy schedule to knit a hat, which is greatly appreciated!
• My mother-in-law had to relearn how to knit in order to make her hat.
• Quantity isn't everything, but jamib has made 68 hats, and heidi_and_colin's grandmother-in-law made 41 hats - and three blankets, too!
• I got hats from several states, including NY, RI, MA, MD, and FL.
• My former co-workers at the Gordon Library made 98 hats
• The most popular color hat was yellow, followed by variegated pastels.

Unfortunately, I was unable to convince any businesses to provide free swag, so I'll be springing for the prizes myself - hopefully I'll be able to do a drawing this weekend and get prizes out to their winners! Until then, a huge THANK YOU to all who participated will have to do!

And now, the pictures...





I did let Emma's parents know tonight about the project, so they can see the photos and have an opportunity to provide me with a specific contact at the hospital's NICU. Our family is also participating in Walk America on April 21st in Springfield - our team is called Angel Emma if anyone would like to sign up to join us, otherwise your donations would be most welcome!

If you're interested in sponsoring us, please visit http://www.walkamerica.org/amymarr - we've set a modest goal of $200 so even if you only want to give a little, it'll add up!

We've got about a month to go before the March 1st deadline for Hats for Emma, and the hats are starting to arrive... in droves. We're very nearly to our goal of 100 hats (in my possession) already:


38 hats, the first column by misha9874, and the remainder by the staff of WPI Gordon Library, with the exception of the last hat in the third column, which was made by Debbie Wheeler from New Hope Chapel.


22 hats and 3 blankets, knit by heidi_and_colin's grandmother-in-law. At this point, she holds the record for most hats knit by a single person!

Add to that the previously photographed 22 hats, plus 9 hats by lilfish and 2 hats by Sheila Newman of NHC, and our total is up to...

93 hats!!!

Again, this refers to the hats in my possession, so if you've got 'em, send 'em!

Prizes to be announced soon... ;)

Here's my first pictoral update for Emma's hats:




First column, from top: 1 large hat crocheted by jamib, 1 full-term hat knitted by criminalgrace (pattern from One Skein.

Second column: 7 hats knit by mushmomgreen, all made up by her. I actually am testing the pattern she developed for the fourth one down, which has been dubbed "The Jaywalker Preemie Hat" because the stitch pattern is from Grumperina's Jaywalker socks.

Third column: 6 hats knit by me, based on the patterns on this page. The smallest ones are for a 2 pound (or less) preemie, while the larger ones are for 4 and 5 lb preemies.

Fourth column: 6 hats crocheted by Ginny, who works at the Gordon Library at WPI. I really love the little pink bows on the two white ones!

If you include one hat which I completed tonight (photo was taken last night), I have a total of 22 hats in my possession at this time. We're getting there!!!

(If you're joining us late, you might want to go back and read all previous postings about Emma.)

I have completed 4 hats, and I'm starting a fifth. I was forestalled from completing more by a sorry and badly timed attempt at learning to crochet, but I've since come to my senses and realized that now just isn't the time.

I received yesterday a package on my porch containing 6 very nicely crocheted hats from a woman who works at the library at WPI - someone I've never met! Add that to a large, if not crocheted-with-love hat from jamib, and the current total number of hats in my possession^* is:

11

Just 89 to go!

*I know that many others have finished many hats, some I've seen, some I haven't. But for the purposes of having a count of hats "ready-to-ship" as well as a count for the raffle, I need to keep a counter going of those hats I have here in my possession. This is not meant as a slight for all of you lovely people who have finished your lovely hats - you just need to start getting them to me. Stand, and be counted.

Due in part to my new job, but also to my propensity for procrastination, I have decided to set a deadline for hat submission:

Hats must be RECEIVED, by me, by March 1, 2007 in order to qualify for the raffle.

So, those of you who have already knit or crocheted your hearts out and you're bored stiff, it's time to put down the needles and hooks for a bit, and get your completed hats to me ASAP. If you want to make more, that's great, but I'd like to start getting hats so I can post photos and get an accurate count.

If you need my mailing address, please let me know by commenting!

After the holidays, I'm planning a rather big project. Emma's family is raising money for March of Dimes in Emma's memory, and while we gave a little bit of money, I just don't think it's enough to make a difference. I need to do more.

That's why I want to donate hats to the hospital where she was born, hats for preemies. Hospitals are always in need of tiny hats for these tiny babies - as most of you know, babies can lose a lot of heat through their heads, and while the temperature in NICUs is higher than normal, preemies are often removed from their isolettes for skin-to-skin (also known as Kangaroo Care) time.

My goal is to knit/collect 100 hats and donate them to Baystate Medical Center in Emma's name.

There's no way I can make this many on my own, so here's where I need some help:

If you'd like to help knit or crochet (or sew, why not), comment here - I'll take as many as you'd like to make, and send them all together with cards to comfort preemie parents. Preemie hats take no time at all, and there are several sizes needed by the hospital. Yarn choice should be a cotton or acrylic sportweight (I hear A.C. Moore is closing out a good range of yarns right now), and there are tons of free patterns available on the internet - start here.

As incentive, I'll keep a list of everyone participating, and a tally for a raffle - each hat you create earns you one entry in the raffle for prizes.

Other suggestions and ideas are welcome. Once I get started, I'll probably put a time limit on this project, and I'll post it here.

Feel free to pass this link along to knitterly/crafty friends everywhere.

As you can (hopefully) see by the picture at right, I finally finished Giana's Pinwheel Sweater. Apparently, when I put it away, I hadn't bothered to weave in the ends, which is just stupid and lazy of me. I thought I was bad to procrastinate on the blocking, but I justified it by saying that the sweater would look better if I blocked it closer to the time of it going to live with the recipient.

I was probably in a hurry to reattempt Birch.

Anyway, it's on mushmomgreen's blocking wires, which you might be able to see aren't exactly big enough to go all the way around the sweater, so I cheated and used pins for a few of the loops to stretch it out into a circle. The astute among you will notice that it is pinned to my bed, rather than to the blocking boards jamib gave me for my birthday. The reason for this is quite simple...

I am a moron.

In the excitement of actually having 20 minutes free to get the sweater soaked, "gently squeezed", and on the wires, I completely forgot about the boards.

Which is fine, because jamib has my pins. Thankfully, mushmomgreen's wires came with 20 T-pins, which turned out to be just enough.

The downside of all this is that the sweater needs to be reblocked each time it's washed, so lcmed will just have to give it back to me when it gets nasty enough to need cleaning. Hopefully that won't be too often!

Next up for blocking should be Amanda's legwarmers. I can't decide if I should thread the ribbon through them prior to or after blocking. Any thoughts? The yarn is merino, the ribbon is the cheap crafting stuff from Michael's.

We're back. We made it back at around 9pm last night, and after we'd unloaded, put some things away, and got Sleeping Ainsley into her bed, we hit the sack ourselves.

I rather liked the alternate route DH proposed taking (87N to 90E in NY instead of 87-287-684-84), as it allowed us to avoid the construction mess and probable Thanksgiving weekend traffic... until we got about 5 miles from the Sturbridge/I-84 exit on the pike. Then we slowed to a crawl until we got to Worcester. Why am I paying tolls to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic EVERY TIME we head eastbound on 90 from western Mass.?? It's insane.

For her part, Ainsley was very well-behaved. She's never taken a trip this long (since infancy) without the DVD player, so I was a little afraid of what might happen. She did ask frequently (about 3x an hour) if she could watch TV, and I kept having to explain that we didn't have a tv in the car, etc. But she entertained herself for about 80% of the time and she finally fell asleep for the last 2 hours of the trip, so I'd say we were pretty lucky.

I am not ashamed to admit that I knit most of the trip up. I had very little time to knit during the whole car mess (since my knitting was in the van), then I was too tired to knit most of the time we were there, so I had to make some progress on Ainsley's sweater. Even though she's seen it, I'd like to give it to her for Christmas. I think she'll still be surprised if I finish it and then just wrap it. When I left for PA, I had two sweater fronts, not attached. I now have two sweater fronts seamed at the shoulders, one full arm and about half of a second arm. I do have to go back and redo the bind off on the first arm because I screwed up and did a knitted bind-off instead of a knit-two-purl-two bind-off (which I've never done). Once I do that and finish the second arm, I just have to seam up the sides and arms and knit the neck around, weave in the ends, block, and I'm done.

I'm trying to convince myself that it'll be just that easy.

I also finished working on the fingerless mittens (Fetching, from Knitty), and they came out nicely. I need to wash and block them, and then they're ready for holiday gift giving (and a photo session). I showed them to my mom, and she's convinced that I have a "talent" for knitting. I laughed at her. She tried them on - BIG mistake - and now she wants a pair, too. Great. So I only have 2 more pair to go before I knit a pair for myself!

I have finished Yarn Harlot's one row repeat scarf, and pictures will follow soon, I promise.

For now, I have found a new love - cabling.

I promised myself I would learn how to do it someday, and I finally have a reason - Knitty's Fetching, an adorable pair of fingerless mittens knit out of yummy Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. It's lucious, and while I'm a bit clumsy, I think I've mastered the C4B maneuver (put 2 stitches on holder, move to back, knit the next two, then knit the two on the holder and keep going).

I'm enjoying it so far, and I'm pleased to note that my assasin Amy is also working on a pair (perhaps her second).

OK, I REALLY REALLY HATE THIS PATTERN!!!!

I am, of course, talking about BIRCH. That stupid shawl I've been working on for ALMOST A YEAR, off and on.

mushmomgreen took my Kidsilk Haze Meadow after finishing mom_almighty's Birch in Kidsilk Spray, and worked all but one ball of it. Then, in a moment of what I thought was one of those "teaching moments," she gave it back to me and told me I had to finish it.

Out of sheer guilt, I made an attempt, two weeks ago tomorrow. She had ended after a full repeat, so I had to work Row 1 of pattern. I shored up my confidence by finishing off Amanda's legwarmers first, then I dug in.

I made two errors, first missing a yarn over about 1/3 of the way through the row, then completely screwing something up and ended up one stitch short at the end of the row.

This is where the swearing would have been, had I not been sitting in the basement of my CHURCH during knitting group.

*sigh*

I put a marker where I could find the missing YO, tossed the thing (gently) back into its Ziploc bag, and then chucked it into the backseat of my car.

Where it sat. Alone. Forlorn. For two weeks.

As I drove home tonight, contemplating the impending end of the scarf I'm working on, I thought, "I really should pull those stitches out of Birch and press on."

I am a fool. A moron. An idiot. Why do I keep punishing myself?!?!?!

Because I love knitting.

So I picked back, stitch by painful stitch, taking care not to drop the sticky K2tog ones, all the way back to the missing YO. I turned my knitting around, performed the YO, and there it was - a dropped stitch.

Here is where the swearing WAS, because A was in bed, and DH was already screaming at the football game. The only one who noticed was Meeko, and he's used to my knitting-induced outbursts.

I have no idea what to do now. I seriously can't figure out how much damage has been done, or by whom. It appears to span 2 purled stitches in the previous row, but I have no idea how I could have missed that error, if mushmomgreen had made it, until now. Those familiar with the Yarn Harlot's method of fixing dropped lace stitches should know that I did stretch it out and try to figure out how I could fix it on my own. I just can't see the error, and if I can't do that, I can't fix it - not with lace. You can't fudge these things with lace, trust me.

So I've crammed Birch back into its Ziploc bag and I'll be taking it at some point in the future to Dr. Fix-a-Knit (the aforementioned knitter of Birches) again. I'm sighing, heavily here, on the verge of tears at yet another failed attempt to complete this !)(!#*$! shawl, which I probably will never wear at this point, because I hate it so very much.

I'd recover by casting on for a Christmas gift using Debbie Bliss Cashmerino (yes, you can drool here, just not on my yarn), but my eyes are going buggy from close examination of the lacework and the lateness of the hour.

Pass the chocolate.

You are Shetland Wool. You are a traditional sort who can sometimes be a little on the harsh side. Though you look delicate you are tough as nails and prone to intricacies. Despite your acerbic ways you are widely respected and even revered.

Take this quiz!