Purlewe Knits

I got an unflavored latte today at a semi local coffee chain. It was aweful! Terrible! It was also WAY to hot to drink. This is why I must remember to stay loyal to my beloved Starbucks. Good coffee AND drinkability!

Today was a good day. I took the monkeys to an art class and we ran an errand. The errand was a bit rough, because the girls were getting ancy, but we made it through. We came home, lunched, napped, and went back out. This time to the new local grocery. I LOVE it. So big and so many things and so clean and the people are so helpful. It is a bit longer drive, but it is my new local grocery!

The one thing I didn’t like about the art class was the cost. It was $10! That is a lot of money for an hour of entertainment. I got a bunch of art supplies a while back. I think it is time to instill art time at our house. I need to get a book of “other” crafts. I’ve got the paint supplies, glue, construction paper, popsicle sticks, scissors, and a bunch of other random crafty things. I need ideas, that’s what I need. I’ve got a couple of books, I need to unpack and find them and get started. I hereby declare Monday craft day!

On knitting!
I started my Solstice knitting (summer solstice to winter solstice). I still hate to call it Christmas. It has nothing to do with religion in our house. I found an article last winter that made everything ok. I need to find that again. The first project is a sweater. I got the bottom ribbing done and part of the bottom design. Not sure if I am going to post pictures of it here or not. It IS a present!
I finished the back of my awesome green sweater. Oh so me or the chosen one is a third done. Don’t you think that the back of a sweater is worth a third? I think I will work on the sleeves next, both at the same time of course. To celebrate I’m having a beer (and some potato chips) no more knitting for me tonight!

So here’s what it apparently comes down to. I have time to blog or I have time to knit (insert sleep, sew, read, bake, and so on here). Sacrifices can be made once in a while, I think, but not sure about this 2-3 times a week. Cause then when will I knit?

Right now … so freaking bummed about a project. Ordered some hemp yarn, all excited about a skirt project, and what do you know … I got gauge, but gauge looks more like freaking LACE!

If I was still in my early 20s and had my pre baby/nebraska body I wouldn’t care in the slightest. I care now, I care a lot! Super disappointed!

Scanned Ravelry and found possibly two patterns that might take this yarn, but both are sweaters. Not sure I want this color that close to my face.

DAMN!

I don’t feel like blogging tonight and can’t help but wonder if this is the beginning of the end, again.

Random things from my life.

I wish I was more able to tell people to piss off. There are several people I would LOVE to tell this to right now.

I’m a biker chick. I LOVE to ride my bike. I got a new one this spring and it is the bomb! More about my new bike later. What this is about is biking in Omaha. It sucks. The roads are NOT safe. Recently there were 4 serious accidents in 4 days. How freaking scary is that? The trails get so freaking boring and they are borderline unsafe as well, but for different reasons! I would like to issue this:

Warning to all trail users! If you don’t give my husband and children room, I will not give your room. Be prepared to FEEL me go by. To take that a step farther, if you don’t find it necessary to get your damn puddle of hair out of my damn way, I will not hesitate to run over it. It will hurt me, possibly, but I promise it will hurt your damn dog more.

I love my husband, he is amazing!

I also love to knit and create with my hands. This includes sewing (although I find this super annoying some times), baking, cooking, gardening and lots of other stuff I can’t think of now.

My favorite shoes right now are a pair of pink fit flops. LOVE them.

I really dislike playgrounds that have sand. Yuck.

I have a kick ass sunburn. It seriously hurts. I should know better, I know, but apparently I don’t.

I think red spandex pants should be banned from the face of this Earth!

I get annoyed when I’m randomly (or so it seems) included in group emails that everyone and their second cousin replies too (often reply all). I don’t care. If I did care I would assume I am important enough to get my own damn individual email and not some group email.

I also love my two little girls. More than anything. Tomorrow I’ve decided I’m going to talk about the miscarriage I had 3 weeks ago. I think it is time. I need to get some of this stuff out and if I can do it anywhere it is here, my blog. Before that though I want to specifically say that I love my little girls and nothing can ever diminish that. They are amazing life forces and I am so incredibly lucky to have them in my life.

What am I knitting? It has been a while hasn’t it?

Due to the craziness of this spring … I’m still knitting the same damn thing! It is getting bigger though.

Neither of these are great color pictures, but I like the detail that they show. (I still haven’t figured out how to take great blog pictures on a regular basis.) I’m 6 little rows from having the back finished! That, my friends, the with craziness that has been this spring, is an accomplishment. I love, love, LOVE this pattern.

I also knit my grandma a shawl for her birthday. Her birthday was April 16th and I would like to add that I had the knitting DONE by then. What I don’t have done is the blocking. Still. I don’t have room to block a shawl in our house. The only possible option, the only space that the girls don’t have access to 24/7 is the play room. The thought of having all those pins loose in the play room sends shivers done my spine. I need to get this done though. Maybe this weekend … I’ll count pins and do in on a Friday night, we don’t use the play room often on the weekend, and maybe it will be ok. We’ll just have to be very careful when we go downstairs to leave the house … wouldn’t want a little girl to go running in (barefoot) and find g-grandma’s shawl! Pictures of that, when it is finally blocked … maybe next year?

There’s also be progress on my HUGE sock project, but I have to find that stuff, maybe when I get back to it I’ll blog about it.

Next up, which I’m very excited about, and hoping very much that it will be a more mindless project. I do love, love the cable pattern, but it isn’t for super tired nights – which tonight is one of – 3 hours at the pool with two, two-year-olds wore out this mama! So I digressed … next up is a skirt! I’m totally into skirts right now. I sewed one up earlier this week (blog about that to come) and have another one (sewn) planned. BUT this one is knit. Here’s the pattern … (ravelry link and if you haven’t joined already, get over it and do it) and here’s the yarn, in color 22. I am super excited about this pattern, thinking it can be an almost year around skirt (with tights – of course). AND the yarn arrived today, so I am pumped and ready to go knit my gauge swatch. See ya!

I’ve tried and tried to keep up with the blog thing. It goes okay for a while and then become a burden. This is going to be my last attempt. My domain expires in 24 days. SO, if I can’t make keep up for the next 3 weeks I’m calling it quits.

This past spring has been a bitch though. I should take the time to say that. We tried and failed to sell our house. This is a bit depressing, but I’ve also come to terms with it and living in the city can for sure have its benefits. Farm City by Novella Carpenter has some excellent thoughts along the lines of having some urban agriculture. The house thing just consumed way too much of our time. So we are settling in, for at least another 5 years. It would be nice to have this place paid for before moving so we aren’t in this “can’t buy before we sell situation” ever again. We ordered 8 fruit trees, got 5 blueberry bushes, and 5 chickens. We have someone scheduled to remove a large ash tree from our yard (to provide sun for the fruit trees and chickens), someone else is coming to expand our patio and build a retaining wall, and we are having siding put on the house as well.

Then there was the class thing. I teach online class. With twins (who are now 2 – how the heck did that happen) I do my work at night after they go to bed. I usually teach one class and have about 25 students (that participate). For Spring quarter I signed up for my normal class and a new one. I was having a heck of a hard time getting information out of the woman that designed the new online class when she up and died. Seriously, who does this happen to? I was the only other one to EVER have any (um … 1 week) interaction with this online class so I “inherited” her section. That have me three classes and about 75 students. We added up the assignments I was grading in a week and it was near 500. THAT was a lot of work for “after hours.”

As soon as that fiasco was over we have 2 weeks of family. Three different “groups” of visitors in two weeks. I love them all, but next year we need them to space out their visits a bit. In the middle of that I had a miscarriage. We were incredibly lucky to have my parents here to help with the girls, while Hubby took me to dr appointments and spend a few hours in the ER with me. That was an incredibly trying experience.

So here we are, finally settling in for the spring/summer. Spring is over and summer is here! In full force I might add. We just did a walk around the neighborhood block after dinner and it was a sauna out there. 103 degree heat index. Poor little K was soaking with sweat and little B had to have a shoulder ride from her Daddy to make it up the last hill.

I should have plenty of fodder for the next few days. I’m excited to get it out and see if I can make this stick this time. Tomorrow … what I’ve been knitting and maybe some on my sewing projects.