Obsession du Jour

Right. So...Where were we?

Hi.  Still alive.  Apparently, that wee re-commitment to the blog didn't stick, so I'm thinking to try again. 

What have we been up to?  Hmmm.....recap, in no particular order:

- An attempt to be involved in the 365 project on Flickr for both WB and myself, which was great and fun, but seems well and truly dead now. I did try, I did.  Sadly, I'm just not organized enough to manage all the daily tasks of this new mom paradigm, plus work, plus DAILY self-portraits of both of us.  I'm thinking I'd like to try to do a weekly version of this, but will miss the crew in my current Flickr group, thus cementing my conviction that it's not WHAT you do, but with whom you do it.  Inertia. It's what's for dinner. Flickr albums here and here if anyone is interested.

- Some knitting. Not much, given the craziness of the schedule we currently keep and the amount of both house maintenance and 'homework', but some.  Typically I get to knit on Monday nights at knit night and anything else is icing.  I do have a handful of small FO's and I'd like to get shots of those soon and get them posted, for the record. Oh, wait, here's one thing for which I DO have a photo:

Details here, such as they are.

- I got hit by a bus.  Not kidding.  Those details are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/obsessiondujour/2571906788/in/set-72157604360064848/

I'm only just now getting all the MBTA stuff cleared up, and will hopefully be replacing the (completely totalled) scooter very, very soon.  Like....in the next week or so, if at all possible. 

- WB turned a year old.  It's surreal.  Of course, being this behind on the posting, now he's 14 months old and starting to talk. Er, I should say....he's starting to talk actual English words.  He's been carrying on conversations for months, only...well...sadly, we don't speak "babbleese."  What with the walking at 10 1/2 months and the talking, I feel like he's going to head off to college any day now.

- July was the month o' whooping cough at Chez Obsession.  Despite having been vaccinated, WB came down with it, and let me tell you: it sucks.  It was a month of sick + recuperation, and now it's taken us another month (AFTER the cough went away) to get back to that place where he is a) completely well (he seemed extra susceptible to minor colds for a while after the WC), and b) sleeping through the night again.  Only...now he's decided that he likes to get up at 5:00 am every morning instead of 5:40 am.  Me no likee this new schedule, but damned if I'm not getting TONS more done at work by simply getting in 45 minutes earlier.  'Tis a good thing too, since on-going employment is a good thing, and busy-season is a-coming.

- WB and I went 'a-vistin'.  We got to hang with some of our favorite peeps, and B got to take his first plane ride.  Wheeee!

- WB had his first trip to the beach:

How about you?  Whatcha been up to?

Even MORE of a drive-by

Can't talk....quarter-end reporting and no daycare are a bad mix, leaving me very busy, but here, you MUST go and see about this.  MUST.

http://daddytypes.com/2008/05/15/handknit_dissected_frog_on_etsy_100_formaldehydefree.php

Talk amongst yourselves about how adorable this is.

P.S. There's a Rat too.  LOVE this.

Escape!

See the happy?

On Sunday morning, I smooched the wee babe (I'm still floored by how much I can miss this kid even on a tiny half-day away like this - floored.), hopped into Ms McYarnpants car and took off.  We stopped to pick up Ms. Monster Yarn, and JUST made it in time to meet Melanie for the main festivities, though we did miss lunch at the brewpub (so.sad.)  Show of hands for who's surprised that the Dynamic Duo of late were.....um...late?  Yeah, I didn't think so.   This time it totally wasn't my fault, and there was a cat involved.  Want to know more?  Go bug Stitchy and make her tell you...it's FANTASTIC, and she has pictures.

No matter how many of these kinds of events I go to, I'm still always shocked by the sheer volume of people who show up and how, despite the fact that there was A FESTIVAL in our town this weekend, still the knitters turned up two+ hours away in such large numbers that you just about couldn't move in Webs....and that's saying something, given how big that store is.  Not that I'm surprised that they'd show up, just....well....holy crap there are a lot of knitters.  Where do you guys all go between Harlot events and wool festivals?

Despite my best intentions, the photo above is the only one I took all day.  Too busy chatting and shopping (I wouldn't have admitted that part, but there's photographic proof), as usual.  I always WANT to take advantage of the pretty yarn for some fun photo ops, but I'm never willing to stop running my mouth long enough to do it.   Thank god for Caro.

Drive by

Knitting news:  Um.  None, really.  The handspun scarf grows slowly, and that's aboout all I have to report.

Oh wait, I'm heading to Northampton Sunday.  Wheeee!  I am powerless to resist the chance to see so many of you in one place, especially since I don't really get out as much as I used to much.   The jury is still out on whether or not WB will come along.  His dad is more than happy to hang at home with him for the day, but I always hate missing any of our weekend time together.  He's still not the biggest fan of the car either, so there's that.  Maybe if we give him this for the trip:

Who else is going?

Two birds and all that...

Knitting AND spinning update, all in one go:

(Ravelry link)

This yarn was what I was spinning during the first half of labor last summer, and so ended up having a fair bit of sentimental value.  I had THE HARDEST time figuring out what I wanted to do with it.  Knit it? Pet it? Stick it in some sort of 'time capsule'?

In the end I decided I wanted it to be something that would see a lot of use and be an everyday reminder of a special time.  Then I had to pick a pattern, which ended up being tougher than I expected.  I think I've started about 6 different projects with this handspun, looking for just the right thing, and I think this is finally IT. 

Interestingly enough, it just really wanted to be a simple (and I am ALL about the simple these days) woven stitch scarf which will allow the fractally-spun color changes to shine through.  Even though these are not my typical wardrobe colors, I think this will be both practical and cheery enough to get a lot of use during the long, cold, Boston winters. 

Once in a while

Every so often, there is still an occasional crafty venture here at Chez Obsession, and today I thought I'd see if I could scrounge a few of the current projects together.

I actually didn't realize how much knitting I got done on the T until I stopped riding the rails in favor of the scooter.  The train portion of my commute (bus knitting = car sick = bad news) was pretty short - 15 mins or so of effective knitting time, but half an hour or so a day, 5 days a week apparently adds up, because without it, I'm kinda dead in the water.  That means that these:

Jaywalkers in Socks That Rock 'Carbon'

...which were my train knitting for a while, are going sloooooowly.  But they're getting there, just a few more rounds to the toe decreases on sock #2 and then BAM, new socks.  The first new handknit socks in well over a year, I think.

I did finish these earlier this year, and have an inordinate love for them. 

They're the ever-popular Fetching pattern, altered just a tiny bit and knit out of my beloved Roy handspun.  I know, I was determined to make socks out of him, but the yarn just wasn't going to be happy on my feet, and we all know that you must listen to what the yarn tells you.  These are fantastic and cozy, and just rustic enough that they knock the 'girlie' edge off the pattern for me.  Mr. ODJ likes these so much that he steals them constantly, so next up is a pair of Dashings for him out of the other sock's worth of this yarn.  Here's how they're going so far:

Heh.  Maybe for NEXT winter.

Splish Splash

Wheeeeeee!

Mmmmm. Pears.

Mad skeelz.

ETA: I recognize that this is not the most exciting video ever, and that the lighting sucks since this was last night after dark, but hey -- look!  I have mastered the (couldn't actually be any easier since they give you the code when you upload) video embedding!  Shut up.

Also? LOOK! He feeds himself!  It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows us that this kid loves.to.eat.

On getting one's life back. Sort of.

You know how I mentioned yesterday that I go to bed at 9pm?  I have a confession to make.  That's not entirely true.  As a nod to our formerly relatively social lives, one night a week Mr. ODJ gets the night off to play poker, and I go to bed about 8:15pm (that's just about as soon as I can reasonably get to bed after getting WB to bed at 8pm) and one night a week, I am released from Mom duty to stay up late-ish (10:30pm.  Wild times.)  and do this instead:

It turns out that having that one night out a week, most weeks, regardless of what it means to the sleeping or chore schedule, is worth it's weight in.....well....liquor, apparently.   

And here is what happens when one is (against one's will) trying to backwards-engineer a commercially knit item in an entirely different yarn without taking the time to check gauge or try to write out the pattern in any way first.

See, the ribbing wasn't really tight enough (compare to comercial product up by the Mojito bottles), but there was no way I wanted to reknit the top part of the mitt again (actually let's start with how I never wanted to knit this at all.  pink. bobbles. unpleasant yarn.  what's to like?  but it's a 'gift' project for someone I adore who had no idea what they were asking so...you know...you do stuff for your friends, right?) so I decided to just borrow someone's scissors and make my life easier.  Cut off the ribbing, pick up the stitches, and knit in the other direction on smaller needles.  Isn't that what anyone would do?  Apparently not, but it all worked out in the end, and the wretched mitt is done now. 

Oh, and can we PLEASE talk about how this yarn is SO FAR from 'cashmere' that it shouldn't even be able to have cashmere in it's name?  60% Acrylic, 35% Nylon, 5% Cashmere.  Really?  I mean...if I was eating something that was 5% cheese, would I be able to call it cheese?  No.  I would have to call it "Processed Cheese Food".   Not that there's anything wrong with this yarn (or Velveeta, for that matter. Cheese dip w/Rotel - yum.), it's perfectly fine for what it is, and you certainly can't argue with the price, but it seems wrong somehow to lead people to believe that this is what cashmere feels like. Because that is a big, fat lie.  Just like calling Velveeta cheese would be a big,fat lie.

Oh, hey, would you look at that?  Back two days and I'm already ranting.  Look at me go.

SO.  ANYWAY.  About that knitnight thing we were discussing?  Recently, I've been getting there like this:

Squeeeeeeeee!  See the knitting bag hanging from the 'purse hook'?  This is also how I get to work these days, after many, many, many frustrating lost battles with the MBTA and their concept of 'on time' - which is to say that the 'T', while very valuable, is just not reliable enough when being late to daycare costs $1 a minute.  Know what I mean?

So...um....hi.

First, in order to silence the inevitable:

Note handknit sweater.  Also note drooly-mouth indicative of teething babies and his favorite chew-toy on the floor at his feet.  He's covering them as he hams it up for this pic, but there are two lower teeth and one upper, and we are now working on tooth #4.  He hit the 9-month mark this past weekend, and he's become a champion crawler, a speed-cruiser, and I swear, he'll be walking any day now - a fact which is both adorable and more than a little scary.  He's also getting into everything, loves taking stuff apart (did I mention his Dad's an engineer?) and is just generally being a blast.  There's still not a lot of sleep going on here (see above "Teething"), but as long as his Mr ODJ and I are smart about going to bed on time (um.  9pm. B goes to bed at 8pm. I'm trying not to dwell on how there's not a spare moment of time in my day most days b/c I have to go to bed so f*^king early.), our ongoing set up of splitting the night for wakeups works pretty well to keep us at least functional.  Most days.  And then there are the mornings, like this morning, when we all wake up feeling like this:

Yup.  He fell asleep in his jumper while Mr. ODJ showered.  I'm told that he stayed like this for about half an hour and then woke up and just went on back to jumping like nothing happened.  So damned cute. Little dude luuurves his jumper.  He would jump in it forever if we let him, but we save it as a special morning treat so that we can get ready with certain measure of peace.   Please, for the love of cashmere, do not write to me about the exposed power cords, nail heads and splinters you can see in this photo.  I know.  It's a disaster-in-waiting in the unrenovated portion of the house, hence the jumper instead of the free-wheeling crawl and cruise-fest that B would probably love to have for those 20 mins a day that we like to brush our teeth and make ourselves presentable for our coworkers.  We're working on it.  More specifically, the contractors are working on it.  Well, they WILL BE working on it starting Monday. Wheeeeeeee.

More later.  Really, really must work now, before anyone catches me at this.