Look, ma... No Sleeves!

The bodice is done and all it needs now are sleeves!

Today was a fun day. The kiddo and I packed up and went to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. for the day. We saw lots of cool creatures (yes, even the pandas were out in force today!) The best one was the octopus. It was just finishing with it's feeding when we arrived and that was a very active octopus. It had finished extracting it's own meal from a PVC pipe that the keepers hid it in and was schemeing for the fish that belonged to the anemone that was it's tank mate. It was flashing colors and changing the texture of its skin and sending tentacles out every which way. It was soooo cool!

Tomorrow is the big pack. The kiddo and I leave Saturday morning for a week of Suzuki Violin camp in Oregon, followed by a week of fun after daddy joins us. We will have 4th of July on top of Mt. Hood. It should be a great trip, and be a chance to catch up with old friends and neighbors while we are there. The challenge is packing for the two of us for two weeks, some hot, some cold, some wet, some dry, in one oversized suitcase. We also have to get one small violin through 2 airports as a carry-on item! We have done it before and I am sure that we will do it again!

The Jockey progresses

I am almost done with the back of the jockey sweater. The kiddo has decided that he wants the number 8 on the sleeves so I worked out a chart for that since it won't be long before I am on to the sleeves.

Wired knitting

Last night I started playing around with knitted wire again. Here are the results...

This bracelet is from Nancy Wiseman's book Knitting with Wire. It is actually pretty easy to make, but a bit hard on the finger tips. I like the color coated wire a lot. As soon as my fingers heal up a bit, I will make another one!

The jockey sweater has a front...

The front is done... Disregard the weird whiteish stripe going up the left side. That is just a piece of waste yarn marking off 5 row increments so I could count easier!

The back is started and the kiddo has decided that he wants to have the number 8 on the sleeves. There was actually a jockey wearing a shirt with a pattern remarkably like this in the Belmont Stakes this weekend! His was red and white, but same idea...

A new nephew!

My brother-in-law and his wife had a baby over the weekend. He is a cutie!

It is always nice to have small people to knit for... Unfortunately, this kiddo lives in Georgia where the need for woolies is limited!

Hopefully his mom and dad are getting some sleep once in a while. The kiddo around here is very excited to have a new cousin. This is #2 for him and he really can't wait to meet him!

Progress... And a new name

Before the rip out, the kiddo decided that he wanted quadrants of the two greens and numbers on the sleeve so it would look like a jockey shirt. I think it sounds good, so no more green monster... hello Jockey in Green! The rework is going well. I have a couple of inches finished and will have it back to 14 inches in no time!

School is winding down for the kiddo. Only 7 days left! Our neighborhood has a big last day of school party for all the kids and we all pitch in to rent a moon bounce and order pizzas and stuff. It should be fun! My mom will be here to join in the revelry too.

The sad demise of the green monster...

Well, I had about 14 inches of the back of the green monster finished when I decided that I had better write down what I was doing. In the process of writing, I counted the stitches on the needle (apparently for the first time) and discovered that instead of 90, I had 96! Oops! Upon measuring the width of the piece, I discovered that it was 18" wide. The kiddo is a skinny little beast so a 36" sweater would be WAY TOO BIG!!! Plus, I would probably run out of yarn with the darn thing that big. SOOO, out come the needles and the ripping process began. Thirty minutes later I had 2 balls of yarn and no sweater in sight. I cast on the correct number of stitches (I actually counted this time, TWICE!) and now I have about an inch complete instead of the the 14 inches that I had before. Ripping out good work sucks, but not as much as making a sweater with one short sleeve because you ran out of yarn at that point!

The green monster

Well, this one is called the green monster. Of course, every kid will be jealous of it... The kiddo dyed the yarn himself in Kelly Green Wilton Icing Color. He told me that he didn't want stripes. I suggested half and half on the front, he countered with quadrants so it would look like a jockey (he really got into the Kentucky Derby). He even wants me to put numbers on the sleeves. You never know!

I also finished the blue and green socks for the kiddo this week. They look good and he likes them...