THE SOCKS ARE DONE!!

The socks are done, hoorah! It's self-striping yarn, so don't be too impressed. I did manage to get the stripes to line up pretty well on the two socks, so that's pretty good.

Here they are:

One Skein Secret Pal Delivery

Look what came in the mail from my One Skein secret pal!! After expressing my interest in socks (and especially in knitting them on two circular needles), my secret pal sent me this gorgeous skein of Lisa Souza sock yarn and Cat Bordhi's "Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles" book to help me learn. It was especially thoughtful of you to wind it into two separate balls so I can see if I'm brave enough to try doing them two at a time! And thanks for the websites you sent in email too....I've been inspired to finish my green striped socks so I can work on these. Now I have to decide whether to try it out on not-so-beautiful yarn first, so I can learn before using this nice stuff.

I love the colors of the yarn...subtle variegation so there's some variety, but not too much. Great choice....Thank you so much! Sorry that the bottom picture is so blurry, but I thought it was the best picture of the color of the yarn.

UFO update

If you remember, I listed some projects I needed to finish:

Here's what I've got started right now:

1. Baby blanket to wrap shower gift (that one has been ripped out 3 times to get the right dimensions) Done!
2. Green Striped socks. My first pair of adult-sized socks! I have one done and the second is on the needles. Progress is being made, really.
3. Eyelet wrap for Graceful Stitches. This is a volunteer project and I hate how it's turning out...I need to bring it in to see if I should continue with this pattern or not. Going back to Graceful Stitches because it's not worth continuing
4. Crochet Scarf Finished, then ripped out. It wasn't what I wanted.

So that means that only one of those projects remains! That's pretty good, if you ask me. (Of course I think that's good). I also made that felted bag, and a couple of washcloths from Mason-Dixon Knitting. And I used my first washcloth already! I will post a picture later (when I'm not feeling too lazy to walk downstairs to get the camera).

It's going to rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain

I've got that song from an elementary Sunday school musical in my head, "It's going to rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain....(repeat 3x), one hundred percent chance of rain!" Of course, they were singing about Noah, and we're not at the Ark-building stage here, but man has it been pounding down all day. We even lost power at school for an hour or so (which always makes teaching SOOOO easy).

And it hasn't been hot enough to run our new Air Conditioner. I know I shouldn't complain because that's good for our finances, but since it's brand new, it would be nice to use it.

That's about all for now.

Hooray for AC (oh, and heat too)

I was reprimanded for not posting the update on the AC/duct work front....the AC and new furnace are installed along with some new duct work (free of charge)! It was finished on Wednesday afternoon and then Thursday was hot and sticky and we tested it out. It was awesome. :) Now it's been nice and cool since then (I'm not complaining, just stating it) so we haven't used it again.

I won't go so far as to post a picture....that would be going to far, right?

Felted Tote

I just finished this Felted Tote from my favorite book, One Skein.

(No one is allowed to say anything about the fact that this was not on my UFO list...I started and finished it while effectively ignoring my other projects. Now the baby shower is only a week away, though, so the blanket NEEDS to be finished).

Since it's felted, that means you knit it bigger than normal and then shrink it (intentionally).

So, it started out like this:

It's laying on our ottoman, which means that it started off about 23 inches tall. It shrinks a lot. You can especially tell in the stripe pattern.
Here it is once it's shrunk, on the same ottoman it used to cover:

And here it is standing up, except the handles look dippy in the picture. Alas. I am not an exceptionally skilled knitting photographer.

Pretty cool, hmm?

Compost Bin

We've been composting for the past year or so, but we didn't have a proper receptacle for the composting. And now that we have wonderful stuff from last year that we can use in our gardens this year, we needed two compartments for new compost and ready-to-use compost. So, after the AC guy left at 8:00 a.m. yesterday, we got to work. It's amazing what you can accomplish by noon when you get started at 8:00!

We also cleared out another bit of space (on the left) for additional vegetables in our garden:

Did we mention that the rest of the tree got taken down? A man we refer to as "the crazy guy with the chainsaw scar on his cheek" climbed up that thing and then proceeded to take it down BY HIMSELF.
We helped our neighbors construct the replacement swingset this afternoon...the boys were very happy swinging away tonight.

AC Tease

Our appointment to have the new furnace and central air installed was for this morning. Yesterday morning the installer called and said that the units hadn't arrived yet and we'd have to cancel. I told him to call if they arrived, because we wouldn't be making any other plans. So lo and behold, around 6:00 last night he called to say it had arrived, and to expect them between 7:00-8:00 this morning. That meant that we got our sorry selves out of bed BEFORE 7:00 A.M. on a SATURDAY. They arrived at 7:30, but had bad news once they looked around...our current duct system is too small for the 2 ton unit. However, the Sears guy who sold us the system should have known that, so we're hoping that Sears will pay for it (the installer hinted that they should, and have paid for others in the past). KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED!

The sun is out!

Hoorah! Here is a combined garden/knitting picture:



Our gardens are perking up with today's sunshine...some of the plants looked abused after the torrential rains.

If only the poison ivy would get abused and die!

UFOs

That stands for UnFinished Objects in the knitting world, and I've crossed the line from OneProjectAtATime land into the land of UFOs.

Here's what I've got started right now:

1. Baby blanket to wrap shower gift (that one has been ripped out 3 times to get the right dimensions)
2. Green Striped socks. My first pair of adult-sized socks! I have one done and the second is on the needles, but I have been distracted by my Happy Hooker book.
3. Eyelet wrap for Graceful Stitches. This is a volunteer project and I hate how it's turning out...I need to bring it in to see if I should continue with this pattern or not.
4. Crochet Scarf

I think there's more, but memory is being selective....I have so many things I want to start, but I should really finish those things, hmm?

dry

I don't want to jinx anything by saying that we've been dry during all of this flooding, but so far so good....it's pretty crazy how many schools have had flooding and that they're closing school for floods. We feel very fortunate that we're ok, but worried about our neighbors to the north.

P.S. 8 days straight of rain makes small children CRAZY AT SCHOOL.

over-punctuating

I just looked at the list of previous posts and realized that I have a tendency toward over-punctuating, specifically over-exclamation-pointing.

Then again, if it isn't exciting and worthy of an exclamation point, why even blog about it?

I just got a new book called The Happy Hooker. He He He. It's a crochet book...get it? Hooker? It's by my favorite Stitch and B*tch knitting lady. I've been playing with different crochet stitches. Nothing worthy of a photo, though. Hopefully soon.

I also just finished My Life in France by Julia Child. I loved it! I didn't have much (any) knowledge about Julia Child besides her funny voice, but I loved the description of France, the food, and her very interesting life. Also notable are the photographs her very artistic husband took while they were there...they're interspersed among the text and add a lot of insight into France after the War. I'm pretty impressed that I got it within a month of release through my LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY. (yes, I love libraries)

Now I'm reading Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her. I'll let you know what I think about that one....

If half a tree falls...

If only the top half of a tree falls in a back yard, does it still do damage? Well, of course it does! And we were even here to see and hear it.
Never a dull moment around here, that's for sure.

Thankfully, the tree did not hit the house...the deck (on the other people's half), though, and the swing set (the tree fell onto the other people's "half," but it's technically joint property). The falling tree gods were on our side, though, because the mom and 5-year-old who were out in the back yard were not hurt, and it fell four hours before the birthday party for their 11-year-old took place in that same backyard. So if it was going down, it went down in the best way it could.


Can you believe that's only part of the tree? You can see here that it was just one portion of the top half of the tree that broke off. We're thinking from looking at it that it had been traumatized at some point (maybe lightning?) and that weakened it.

It's windy again today and I find myself looking at the remaining trees with a wary eye.

I saw the yarn harlot!

Isn't that a funny name? She's very funny and she writes knitting books. She's on a book tour right now.

If you look closely, you can see me in a picture on her blog. I'm in the fourth picture down, standing behind the girl with the bright green sweater and purple scarf. I'm wearing a blue sweater.

New house color!

Look! Our house is a new color! (See earlier post for a reminder of how ugly it used to be) This is not its best angle, but it keeps drizzling at the time of day when it's best to photograph.
Here's a photo of the back with our new (matching) umbrella, courtesy of my parents. Oh, and notice the deck, of course.

It looks SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better!

Visit Extraordinaire!

My parents came for a visit! We had a lot of fun during their stay.

We went to a botanical garden:

We loved this flower, but it was the only unmarked flower in the whole place! Anyone know what it is?We went to the driving range:
We went to the Boston Marathon:

We played bocce and cribbage and ate ice cream and Easter dinner. All was very fun. We miss them already!

New Front Door!

We're very excited because we're getting our house painted over April vacation. We had thought we'd do it ourselves, but we got a really reasonable bid (and we only pay half because it's a duplex) so we're hiring someone. That will be an interesting experience...to have someone else doing work on our house, that is.

Just in case people haven't seen just how ugly the color of our house currently is, here's a photo: (no offense to anyone else with this house color, but on a place as devoid of architectural detail as ours, it looks atrocious)

Because we're getting the house painted, it made sense for us to replace our front door before the painters arrived. We'd already been planning to replace it, because once we replaced the windows last summer, it became very clear that the door was leaking some major cold air into the house. When we took the door out, this is the insulation we found:

That's right...it's about 1/2 inch thick, and 1 inch deep. What a surprise that it was leaking air (insert sarcastic tone).

I was laughing when I read on a webpage that you need to be ready when you take the door out, because it's very disconcerting to have a hole in your house that you can't close. Here is our hole:That hole is gone, of course, and is filled by this lovely door:It won't stay white for long!

Knit Along with us!

I've joined the One Skein Knit-Along. I love this new knitting book! It's called One Skein and all of the projects are completed with just One Skein of yarn. Novel theory (and an apt title), hmm? Anyway, I've posted some of the projects I completed on the Knit Along site. It's very fun to share with other people who are working on the same projects.

Such knitting fun!

Go BC! And Go School Libraries!

It's BC fever around here as they play in the sweet 16 tonight. They've started off strong...hopefully they can keep it going!

Crazy week this week, including lobbying at the State House on Wednesday in support of School Libraries. You can read about the event here:
MSLMA Legislative Day

It's pretty cool to go around the State House and go into the Senators' and Representatives' offices to talk to them. Hopefully we've made some progress!

Odyssey

So I just finished my class last Wednesday that was called "That's Just Classic!" Among many other things, we read The Odyssey. We read Robert Fagles's version (yes, that "s" belongs at the end according to a couple of different style guides, which was also discussed in class), which I highly recommend. I also highly recommend the recording of Ian McKellan reading it--we listened to some of it in class. Justin was kind enough to read some of it aloud to me because he's such a great husband!

There's also a great article in this month's Smithsonian.

Happy Reading!

Weekend mania

Well, we had fun last weekend at the Celtics game with people from my staff...the Celtics lost, but that means the Milwaukee Bucks won...so I'm not too disappointed. However, I know that growing up, the Bucks weren't that great...so is this a case of the lesser of two evils? :)

This weekend Eric is coming for a visit! And we just heard from our friend Liz that she's going to be in town too. So much fun in one weekend!

This is not too exciting of a post, but I didn't want to go tooooo long between postings.

New Armchair

This weekend we bought, of all things, an ARMCHAIR!!


















Isn't it pretty? We were at Filene's in Natick because they're closing that store (it was in the same mall as a Macy's and Macy's bought them out), thinking we would buy a knife set, or maybe an espresso machine. We struck out on both of those two things, but they had just marked the furniture down to 60% off, so we walked through. I thought we had struck out until we saw this one. We both went "Ahhh" when we sat in it. It's up in our bedroom right now until we get our new couch this summer (we hope!). It swivels! Now we just need a reading lamp to go with it!

P.S. the photo on the wall is from our honeymoon in St. John. :)

One good picture

Here's that Florida picture you've been waiting for...














It was a lovely sunset...my dad's comment about him missing it was because someone (a Massachusetts driver, of all things!) was busy running into his van in the parking lot. Thankfully no one was hurt and the van wasn't totaled or anything, but it certainly wasn't the relaxing evening we were hoping for.

That's also why we're greatful that neither of us learned to drive in Massachusetts! :)

Mousse-tro

Tonight while I was at choir rehearsal, my dear husband decided to make the chocolate mousse that chef Alton made on J's favorite cooking show, "Good Eats." He even garnished it with raspberries. It was VERY tasty (very rich, too), so now I'm going to call him the Mousse-tro (instead of maestro, get it?). He made half a batch and I think we still have more than 1/2 of it left for tomorrow.

Florida was great...I'll add a picture later (once I get them off of my camera).

Good night!

Woe is Me

Now, those of you out there that I know and love may be wondering how I can be saying, "Woe is Me" when I am heading to Florida in two days, but here's the deal:

VERY FEW OF YOU EVER WRITE COMMENTS ON THIS THING and it's depressing me. Which means I'm not inspired to write lovely and informative posts. So then you really don't have reasons to comment, and then we find ourselves in the midst of a Catch-22. Alas.

Suzy gets the super-commenter crown for now. I will award another crown soon...don't you want the crown?! I bet you do! You should write a comment then!

Snowshoes again!

We went out snowshoeing for an hour this afternoon at a great place called Noon Hill Reservation that is 5 minutes from our house. (We're slightly embarrassed to admit we didn't know the place existed until today, and it's got great trails!)

It was neat to see the snowshoe prints from people who had gone out before us. We also got to see a golden retriever who was having a great time playing in the snow.

Thanks again for the snowshoes, Mom and Dad!

Snowshoes!! (finally)

It FINALLY snowed today. (A ton of snow, actually...15 inches and counting) I say FINALLY because we got snowshoes for Christmas and we hadn't been able to use them yet because of our unseasonably warm weather and NO SNOW. Not to worry now, though, and we headed out this morning:



Erin and Dave--Note the poles, purchased with the REI giftcard you gave me!

We had a lot of fun and got a great workout!

Knit-o-rific

Well, I've been trying to diversify my knitting projects and skills, so here are a few of my latest items. I am proud to say that I have now made two sweaters. Granted, they've both been for babies (it's so much easier to finish a project when it is small!), but I think they're cute:

Here is a hat and (thumbless!) baby mittens for Grace:










My felted slippers:









My felted tote:

Time to Catch Up

Well, December flew by in a blur--two stomach viruses, a sinus infection, a bunch of Christmas parties and a trip to Montana will fill any month, hmm? But seriously, we're both amazed that it's already 2006. I'm going to back-post some photos from our time in Billings for Christmas for all of you to enjoy!

J and I received snowshoes for Christmas from my parents, but we returned to Boston and there wasn't any snow! The snowshoes are in the basement, anxiously awaiting their inaugural runs.

Happy New Year!

Before and after an English lesson

So, J and Dayton were hanging out together on our last night in Billings. At first, Dayton was having a great time:






Then J started talking to him about something about analyzing English literature and look what happened to the poor kid--out like a light!












Also, Josh, Mandy, Delaney and Kaitlyn stopped by on Thursday night to say goodbye and I snagged this picture of Josh with Kaitlyn (she goes by Kaity, but I wasn't sure how they spell it...)

Gonna get you!

Our nephew Micah (Jess and Shad's youngest) became a crawling fiend while in Billings. I got down on the floor to take a picture of him crawling (wearing the hat I knit for him) and got this shot:














As you might be able to to tell from the dark background of the picture, the flash went off and I was afraid it had hurt Micah's eyes....but the boy loves flashing lights and kept heading toward me to get me, so I got this adorable shot:















Talk about an adorable face!

Spinning 'round and 'round

The last time we were in Billings, the young James boys received Beyblades spinning tops as gifts. The older boys (Shad, Trevor, J and Josh) played with them after the young ones went to sleep, to the point where one of the tops ("Old Blue" was her name) exploded in a blaze of glory. You can ask Trevor about "Old Blue" and he'll extole her many virtues.

Well, this year the big boys got their own Beyblades. Here are some action shots:










And yes, they're playing using an inverted pot-top as their arena.

On Thursday, we were getting milk at Albertson's and they had a real, genuine-article Beyblade arena on clearance for $2, so the tournament was world-class on Thursday night...no more pot tops for these boys!

Christmas Day

After a sleepy Christmas morning, we got ready for the Christmas open house at Kathy's. Trent's daughters and their families came, Josh and Mandy and the girls came, plus Suzy, Russ and Judy, and all the folks that were around on Christmas Eve.

Here are two pictures of cutie-pie Dayton, who was working on holding his own head up while we were there.


















And here's a nice shot of Kathy and Trent:










P.S. If anyone out there (Jess? Kathy?) has a picture of J and I together during our visit, please email it to me! We don't have any pictures of the two of us this Christmas!

Christmas Eve

Thankfully, our travels went smoothly (all three flights!) and we arrived in Billings around 7:00 p.m. Christmas Eve. The party was already in full swing at Kathy's house when we arrived.
Below are some pictures of the older kids with their nose warmers...they humored their Auntie Kahla very kindly.

After opening gifts, we all snuggled down for a long winter's nap. :)