A Nuisance

Yesterday evening the smoke alarm on the second floor of our home died. We heard that annoying chirp alerting us that a new battery was needed. The Quipper pulled a chair into the hallway and unhooked the cover. I retrieved a new battery and the camera. "Only home schoolers would bother to document this activity", I think to myself, hoping I'll never be called upon to prove I teach fire safety even while I prepare to be able to do just that. The new battery goes in and out comes an eardrum piercing shriek. Not the test button's signal, but a solid, shrill squeal that would wake the neighbors.

With his eyes in a heavy squint, as if that instinctive reflex could protect his ears, the Quipper grabs the battery and yanks in out. "Great," he says. "Its broken. Now we all have to sleep downstairs."

My mind screams over the memory of the shriek -- No! Not Great! The Quipper has to get up at a fiendish hour in the morning to catch a flight!

So I ask the Quipper to put the old battery back in. Chirp........chirp........chirp.

And the new one... EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (How could I have done that to him?)

Then the Quipper makes a proclamation to me: You need to buy a new smoke detector tomorrow. (And to the Artist) Tonight you can sleep downstairs. The Engineer has taken to leaving his bed between 5 and 6 a.m. and settling to sleep of the living room sofa. I guess a sleeping sister did not disturb him. Here is how I found them this morning (at that inhuman hour) when the Quipper left for the airport. Yesterday the Artist fell in love with a knitting project I saw at Lotzastitches. Thank you for linking to the bunny pattern! Here she is making her first gauge swatch. She is not excited by the idea of making swatches. Here she is working on the fourth row, and after she did the cast on I did the first two rows for her! Her casting on comes out too tight for her to manage the first row of knitting, so I helped out. Progress on my first glove in slow. Saturday night I had about an hour and a half to knit. After about 30 minutes I realized I had made an error in the place where you make the opening for the thumb. The instructions did not say to break the yarn, but I realized later I would need to do this or else I'd have a string trailing across the opening. Perhaps I could tack it to the inside of the opening after the thumb was complete? No -- not enough slack to have it rest around the gap. It was a taut bisection of the circular opening. Too short to even ( dare I mention the thought that crossed my mind?) it was even too short to snip and knot. I spent the next hour undoing the previous half hour's work. Rats. Sunday evening I got to make forward progress again!

Do The Twist

I found a pattern for some nice gloves in Handknit Holidays that I wanted to try.

There were several merits...
After making a number of scarves, my fingers longed to get back to more slender needles.
I could use some practice yarn sent me by a generous new e-friend. Thank you so much!!!
The pattern called for me to learn some new techniques.
It wouldn't be hard to bind off the fingers early, as what I'm really after is a pair of driving gloves for myself.

I get to use size US 1 (2.25 mm) needles--no aches so far!

Gabriele sent me this shoe box stuffed with practice yarn. There is a nice large ball of royal purple finger weight here (the color is not coming true on my screen). It feels like a synthetic blend and it has a little faint sparkle to it. It is very close to the same shade as my winter coat. The pattern begins with a ribbing pattern calling for right twist and left twist in some of the rows. Off to Google I go. Would you believe results 1-6 of 1,540,000 showed six different ways to do a right twist! What is a girl to do? I just picked one and went with it. I'm sure there will be future patterns presenting me opportunity to try some of the others. Now I know, next time I will try this technique (Direct Method). I think it would be a little easier than what I'm doing now, but I don't want to start over again.

The stitch is slow going. I attribute about half of this to the yarn (I need to be careful to get every ply of each stitch) and half to my inexperience. Here I have six rows of 16 done. The little on-the-needles photo is closest to the actual color, I think.

Let the Games Begin!

It has been a while since my little neighbor children have been over for babysitting. With days off for doctor appointments in their household, illness in mine, and vacation days on my neighbor's part, my children have missed theirs for a good stretch.

The Artist, the Engineer, and Neighbor Nearly-Two playing 'crawl under':
Neighbor Nearly-Three playing train:The Engineer and Nearly-Two Playing 'boat':Yesterday and today they went back to their old antics with great gusto. My cat seems to have forgotten how loudly three little ones can squeal and how many little pairs of legs need to be avoided. Today she hid under my bed for most of the afternoon. This is rather unusual as she is generally not permitted upstairs. But, poor kitty, I felt for her and took pity. I let her remain there.

I even instructed the Artist, "There is a little one with four legs, whiskers, and a tail under my bed. Let her stay there, she wants to escape from the kids." I needed to instruct the Artist because she knows the cat is not allowed upstairs. And when the Artist wanted retire to her room to escape from the kids I knew she would relate to the sentiment!

The trio of smaller ones were particularly loud today and spent a lot of time chasing each other around my dining room table replete with giggles, squeals, and shouts. My, if they had had horns my walls might be rubble around us right now.

I was sure that lonely kitty under my bed needed my company.

Last night I completed the last scarf I had begun. This is my favorite. I like the color and the simple pattern. I don't remember if I already mentioned that, it is:
row 1 K
row 2 K
row 3 k2, p2 alternating to end of row
row 4 k2, p2, alternating to end of row
repeat to desired length.
This is how I made the blanket that protects the off white sofa bed in my den. It is comfy and warm it is wearing well considering how often it is used.

Success

After several years of trying to grow nice mums in the front of the house, this fall I have some success. They will be in full bloom soon smiling their golden yellow smiles at me.Thank you, Evil Genius, for the flowers. The Engineer and I are noticing the experiment work in reverse as the water in the vase takes on a green hue.

Ouch!

I'm not sure what I did. Maybe it's just age. The tendon running over my right index finger is aggravated and causing some pain. I'm hoping this will disappear in a few days and not rear its ugly head again. Then I can refer to it as my old knitting injury.

In the mean time, I was able to buy some size US 17 needles (12.75 mm). I passed over the beautiful wood ($18) version and bought the cheap plastic needles. This size, now the largest in my collection, had decreased the time it takes to make each scarf as described in the last post.

Most of my acrylic stash is used up now, and I'm so glad I got to put it to good use. My favorite scarf may be this red one the is just about six inches long right now. K 2 rows; (K 2, P 2) two rows, repeat until it is desired length. Part of me thinks these big needles are to blame for my tendon inflammation. I didn't do any warm up exercises! Seriously, when I use the smaller needles for socks or sweaters, I've never even had any discomfort in my knuckles.

We'll see how this progresses. It will have some time to heal. I'm not done with Anna Karenina yet (150 pgs. to go). I started reading Bleak House on line. And I have two other library books here at home waiting me for to pay some attention to them.

A Brave Man (and some knitting)

It takes a brave man to teach his daughter to be a Browns fan. These two are watching at the time when the Browns were winning, which was most of the game. In the last 30 seconds of the game, they lost.

But hey--next week they are favored in Oakland.

While they were watching the game I burrowed into my stash of acrylic yarns and dove into some new skeins of yarn given to me by my friend Die Steppdecken des Quilter. I learned from my as-yet-bloggless friend at church (Hi! I'm not sure if you would want your name mentioned, so I did not!) that her children's' school is collecting winter scarves to give to children in the city who have had to do without. She gave me the specifics about what size to make them, and she gave me a quick tutorial on how to make fringe. Then I happily set about the task. Most of my stash was left over from crafts with the children or knitted doll clothes, therefore not large enough to use in any garments I was inclined to make. Some of the lovely colors I got from Die Steppdecken will help make these scarves more appealing!

So far, I have three scarves completed and a fourth begun. Once again, I could not stick to a simple plan, so I've had to make each of them a little different in the pattern. The pink scarf and the light blue one seen here are close to the same. The pink has one knit stitch at the edge of the stockinette body and the light blue has two knit stitches setting off the stockinette center. The dark blue scarf is only about half completed in this photo. It is entirely k2, p2, ribbing. On size US 15 needles with three strands of worsted weight yarn held together, it makes for a warm and snuggly scarf. If I had larger needles, I'd use them, but these are the largest of my collection. The fourth scarf is different. In pink and greens, it tends to stand out so I am giving it a more special shape. I cast on three stitches . On the third row I increased to 5, on the 5th row I increased to 7, and so on up to 11 stitches. There is a two stitch knit border with the center in stockinette. When this one is done I'll put a tassel on each end.

On my screen the pink in this photo is looking a little garish. It is a dusty rose color that appears better in person.

Pat-a-Cake Pat-a-Cake

My MIL turned 60 this week. Tomorrow we're having her birthday dinner at my house. She requested beer-soaked ribs with my homemade barbecue sauce. No problem!

Grandma prefers chocolate cake and purple is her favorite color. Her Grand daughter, the Artist, wants to be a baker some day. Sounds like I will not have to make the birthday cake this year!

My Artist has been doing a little baking here and there by herself. This will be her first birthday cake. A couple of years ago, the Artist visited a bakery for a school field trip. The owner brought her back to the kitchen and showed her all the mixers, walk in coolers, rotating ovens, etc. She was thrilled! While she was there, the icer was working on a glamorous wedding cake. He showed my little one how to control the flow of frosting through a tube and how to write with frosting. She came to the bakery counter carrying an upside down tray, grinning from ear to ear. She had written her brother's name in frosting on the bottom of the tray.

It has been a long time since my little baker has had any practice with the frosting. I thought this would be as good a time as any to let her be creative and I bought some colored frostings. My frosting tube is difficult for me to work with, so I spent the extra $1.19 for the decorator tips. I couldn't get away with buying just purple frosting. The next birthday cakes coming over the next months in our family will have writing or flowers or some kind of designs on them too.

I found the most fascinating cakes while looking for a nice photo to add to this post. You can see them at www.CrumbsofParis.com.

Breaking News...

Engineer "Helps" Artist Bake Goodies for Grandmother