Death to Santa Smurf

I frogged him. He's gone. I'm considering not even knitting him back in, even with a grey background. I'm considering stripes. I'm considering just plain copying Laura's beautiful stocking. I'm kidding. . . kind of. Didn't someone somewhere say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? No, in all seriousness, I will not copy Laura's stocking. I will however, be inspired to simplify, simplify, simplify. I think a lot of my "dollar-store" and "red-heart" feeling about the stocking was because of the cheesy design I chose. It looks great in the book with other colors, but the combo of straight up Christmas colors and little santa faces is too much. I'm hazarding a guess that cool colors with the santa faces *or* plain christmas colors in a simple pattern may look a bit more sophisticated. So, I'm re-thinking the designs I'm putting in the stockings.
In more uplifting news: I finished my honest to goodness first sock. The little baby socks don't count. . . this is the real deal. Now I understand why so many knitters have single socks sitting in their knitting baskets begging for a partner. I loved doing the sock, but now I want to get back to the stockings. . . not so interested in making the lovely orange hued sock partner. I'll get to it. . .someday.
Thanks for the sweet comments. It makes me feel less alone out here. Great job to all of you other stocking along folks. .. yay stockings. Oh, and Katie, your belly is beautiful!

And, how can I not show you my sweet husband and daughter pretending to be asleep to "trick mama." They were pretend snoring too. Ya gotta love it!

Stocking Progress on Vacation

We vacationed. It was wonderful. I knit. I hate it. ARRRRHHGG.
In my knit-shop induced stupor. . . I just bought plain old Christmas colors. I am not a strong color person. I mean, I am not super creative with color combinations. It takes a lot of effort to try and do things in a fresh way (I also have a similar problem with needing everything to be symetrical. . .) Anyway, I am feeling like my color choices don't show off how pretty the yarn is. It's cascade 220 and it's wool and yummy. It looks, to me, like I made it with red heart. Now, there's nothing wrong with red heart. . .but I'd just buy red heart if I wanted it to look like that. So, now I'm frustrated because it looks a little "dollar store" to me and to top it off, Santa looks like Papa-freakin' smurf. . . really, can you tell me that he doesn't? Look at him!

The knitting was going along so smoothly. I'm liking the pattern. It's from this book. I'm doing the mix and match stockings with green, red, white, blue and a random purple color. Mostly I picked the colors because my LYS is going out of business and that's what was there. So, I can't even go trade the skeins I haven't wound yet. My best thought, at this point, is to frog the smurfy santas and use some heather/gray yarn I found at a thrift store (have I
mentioned that I'm an obsessive deal-finder?) that is very similar in weight and is wool like the cascade 220. I'll use the gray as the background for santa, so he doesn't have a blue or green or purple face (the only choices with my current colors). Any thoughts?

So, I put the stocking aside while on vacation. I happened upon an entire laundry basket full of knit picks sock yarn and knit one crochet too merino at a thrift store on the oregon coast for 99 cents a skein. Needless to say, I bought it all and immediately started knitting a tasty little sock. . .I love it.
Now, my momentum on the stockings is lagging, but my sock-lust is just beginning. I have some time. Does anyone have any thoughts on a pattern choice for stockings for a newbie knitter? I have a few in my stitch n' B that are wanting to start with stockings and I'm nervous for them (and for me. . . I'll be teaching them!).
Okay, I'll post more after the death of santa smurf.

Knit Along. . Yay!

Okay,
So the REAL reason I set up this blog is so that when I join a knit along, other knitters can actually come see what I'm doing and encourage me to finish. I am a procrastinator. . .galore. So, with the added pressure of other people potentially coming to look at my progress, well. . .you get it. So, I'm joining my first knit along. Laura, who I went to high school with and haven't seen in YEARS and YEARS is hosting a mistletoe knit along. I'll be making my first ever stocking. Yikes! Also, the stitch 'n bitchers out here in P.A. might knit along too. I've already had one person (who does not knit!) ask to knit a stocking with me. I'm a tad nervous about teaching someone how to knit a sock, as I've really only knit one pair of socks. And, well, they were for my daughter, who is now only 1 and a half. . . so you can imagine how small those were. So, I'm attempting to link Laura's knit along here. If I do something wrong and somehow wreck havok with some techie gizmo in the world. . .just let me know and I'll stop trying to do something I know nothing about.

Twins for a day

I've always wondered how those superwomen with mulitples DO IT! Now I have even more profound respect for the families with twins, triplets or (god forbid) quads and beyond! Abby's little friend "A" came over for about 6 hours yesterday. We've done a few hours at a time before, but never through nap time etc. Both girls are used to undivided mama attention when going down for naps. Needless to say, this mama had a rough time getting them down. In the end, I carried "A" in the sling for nearly 2 hours (she's at least 25 lbs. . .good gods!) until she was dead asleep. Then, with her still strapped to my chest, I layed down with Abby so she could fondle my ear (her comfort) to get to sleep. Then, snuck out of Abby's room and creeped downstairs where I was finally able to put "A" down on the couch and got a whole sweet hour of quiet. Phew!
The girls crack me up. They are both about 18 months old and are starting to actually be friends. Abby sits down in the yard and pats the ground next to her, beckoning to "A", and says, "sit, sit?". "A" sits and then Abby gets up and goes to the sandbox, "bah, bah?". . "A" goes over there. Then, oh the kicker, I put the two of them side by side to eat dinner outside (fried rice with tofu and yummy veggies. ..the only way Abby will eat anything good for her. . .buried in carbs!). The dialogue was hysterical. "poon?" says Abby as she takes "A"'s spoon, "soon," says "A" as she takes Abby's spoon. "A" sneezes and Abby says, "bess yous" (bless you). At the end of the meal, they stacked their bowls and spoons and laughed and laughed as Abby said, "dain dyou" (thank you) when "A" helped take her bib off. Too freakin' cute. Oh, Abby's on the right in the pic.

Uh, how do I work this thing?

So, here we go. The first ever blog entry by this nutty mama. I'm sure I'll stumble a bit as I navigate this crazy world of technology (jeez, don't I sound like a grandma?). Be patient as I learn.
Now, for some knitting content:
I found a great sweater at the thrift store. The sweater's pretty ugly, but the yarn? Well, I'm 99% sure that it's Noro Shinano in colorway 12. I'll be frogging it and making something loverly. I hope. Here's a pic of the sweater.