"Sweetie, what's that smel..." "NOTHING!"

In the spirit of my knitting Olympics, I finally blocked a bunch of colder weather items that have been sitting on top of our radiator since approximately March. Blocking means simply soaking them in cold water with some wool friendly wash and then laying them out to dry flat in the shape that you want the item to be. Wool is an amazing fiber. When it is wet, you can shape it however you like, and it will dry to those exact specifications. It's like clay. It also wicks moisture while you're wearing it, and keeps you exceptionally warm.

So, I blocked my sweaters, and set them out to dry on our bedroom floor. There aren't a lot of other places I could be doing this, you see. Our house isn't small, but nor is it large. And with Anne running around, there aren't many spots that I can have things lying out that I don't want chubby little fingers to get into. So our bedroom floor it is.

A few nights ago, I walk into our bedroom where Mike is already tucked into the covers, reading a book. From the doorway, I can see his nose twitching. I quickly set to work getting dressed for bed, acting completely innocent, as if it didn't smell like a pack of soggy dogs had run through our bedroom just moments before.

"Sweetie, what's that smell in here? Is that your...sweaters?"

"Well, yes. It's just wet wool, it'll go away."

"I hope so." *brows creased*

And unfortunately for Mike, that same scene was repeated the next night because my blocking backlog was so vast. He survived.

I knit 2.5 more inches on my sweater and am now ready to increase. Go Team Knit Picks Lovers!

Ravellenic Games Day 3, and grateful for Ordinary Time...

Ok, so I've been watching a lot of the Olympics. And I've been knitting while I do so. A lot. Well, I mean, I have 2 small children, which translates into = Not Nearly As Much As I'd Like To. But I've been getting a lot done.

Friday afternoon I threw caution to the wind, and cast on right from my desk during the Mass Cast On. Sisterly Knitting Energy wrapped itself around me like a cashmere/Merino wool blend. I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. Later, after dance class, I picked up my fledgling sweater and began to lovingly knit again. I got about 5 rounds in, and I could really see the pattern developing. The fabric is absolutely to die for. Then I saw it.

IT.

There it was. A twist in my in-the-round knitting. What does this mean? It means that, despite how careful I was, when I joined my cast-on row in the round, the stitches were slightly twisted on one side, and now my fabric was twisted. Unless I wanted a moebius sweater, or to steek a cardigan, this is a fatal condition, and I must rip back.

I.was.CRANKY.

I hadn't gotten that far, but I still didn't want to have to start over. Plus, my cast-on was all symbolic and perfect.

Instead of taking this hit like a mature person, I bitched about it to Mike, and then stubbornly stayed up until nearly midnight to knit back to where I had to pull it out.

The next morning I was tired, but determined. I worked on the sweater when I could, and am now past the waist shaping decreases and have 2.5 inches to go before I have to increase for the bust and armholes. I'm a very happy woman on a mission.

Tonight, my goal is to get to those increases. I think I can do it. The sweater is now going so well that I also cast on for a pair of fingerless mittens to enter in the Mitten Medley.

I'm insane.

But on a related note, who else is highly amused that the female beach volleyball players have had to cover up more because the weather is so chilly and rainy in London?

*raises hand*

And modesty aside, seriously. WHO (I ask you) looks good in teeny tiny bikini bottoms running around chasing after a ball on a bunch of sand? I don't care how slim are, NOBODY looks good in this situation. You spend 75% of the time not-so-delicately yanking aforementioned bottoms back to where they should be, and my friends, this is not a flattering look. If you are a teenager, please take note of this. In this case, MORE really is more.

Ok, moving on. I'll post pictures of my in-progress sweater later this week. Henry and I attended Mass yesterday, and I think that finally everyone has gotten the hang of the new responses. And I know there is still some disgruntlement amongst some Catholics about the new translation, but I really like the new responses. Having attended the Mass in Latin recently, I can say that the new responses are much closer to those from the Extraordinary Form. I like them very much.

And as Henry and I sat during the Homily, I was thinking about how nice this summer stretch of Ordinary Time is. It's a good time for contemplation on key parts of the Gospel (the multiplication of the loaves and fish yesterday) and is a wonderful buildup to the busy fall season of saint feasts and Advent.

By the way, Advent is *late* this year; it doesn't start until December 2nd! I can't remember the last time the first Sunday of Advent wasn't Thanksgiving weekend. I'm sad about this, since I'm super excited for Advent to come.

*frowns*

And so it begins...

Today is the big day, and I'm busting my buttons I'm so excited. I have to swatch at knitting lunch today (that's considered "training" and ok to do prior to the start of the Games) and then I'll be all set to cast on later today.

I'll be posting about my progress, so you'll learn lots and lots about the sweater making process, bet you can't wait. By next week at this time, I hope to be well through the body (this is knit from the bottom up), including waist shaping, and nearing the division of front and back toward the armholes. As the second week gets to halfway, I need to be at the yoke colorwork, otherwise I won't make it. To post my project to the finish line, I need to have it bound off with all ends woven in by 7 pm EST on Sunday August 12th. I think I can do it, I really do. And if I finish early, I have a project lined up for the Mitten Medley. Because I'm just that crazy.

And yes, crazy people like me can enter events after the Games begin, so long as it's a fresh project you didn't start before the Opening Ceremonies. The key is *finishing* new projects prior to the end of the final day.

I've always been a person that likes having a goal as motivation, and knitting provides lots of those for me. There's always a new challenge in technique or approach to try, and new exciting projects to move on to. It's such a wonderful, wonderful craft. I used to solely crochet, and I still do crochet sometimes. But knitting has taken over as my first crafting love, and I'm so grateful for it.

Update to be posted Monday after my first weekend of Sweater Triathloning. :)

Happy Feast of St. Anne :)

And it's also raining here today, so obviously, it's a good day. We had thunderstorms overnight, which woke me, but thankfully not the kids. I've been SO sleepy. Last night I slept good aside from the thunder wake up call, but my body feels like it hasn't caught up from poor sleep the night before with Anne. So blogging will be light today. I can barely keep my eyes open. And somehow, I have to look alive on the reference desk from 3-5 pm today, and then go to a belly dance class later. Sigh.

At any rate, I'm all excited by the Ravellenic Games starting tomorrow, and have my yarn and needles all packed and ready to go. I will be posting updates as the Games unfold on how my sweater is progressing. I'm ridiculously excited.

Ravelete for the Sweater Triathlon, reporting for duty!

Yesterday afternoon, none of my beloved knitting friends could make it to our usual daily lunch session, so I was pitifully knitting by myself in my office. I was surfing Ravelry while I worked, the big online community for knitters and crocheters. Suddenly,  I honed in on something that I hadn't been paying much attention to, but that all of a sudden caught my interest like a house on fire:

The Ravellenic Games 2012.

No, not the Ravelympics; apparently that is a trademark violation.  *troublemaker lips firmly zipped* But the Ravellenic Games, in which thousands of knitters compete to finish ambitious projects during the span of the Olympics. The more I clicked through the rules and associated boards on Ravelry, the more excited I got. I rushed home in a tizzy.

Mike: "Do you mean to tell me that there is such a thing as a knitting Olympics and that there are events entitled things like Felting Freestyle, Afghan Marathon and *Sock Put*?"

"YES!!!!!!! Isn't it wonderful?!"

"This may be the cutest thing you've ever told me."

It took me a while to figure everything out, but I think I'm finally all set. I'm officially a member of Team Knit Picks Lovers, competing in the Sweater Triathlon event.

*squeals*

Yes, I'm going to try and knit an entire sweater in 16 days. The pattern I chose is Summer Set by the Sea, and as the name would indicate, it's a very summery garment with short sleeves, so it's ideal for late summer and early fall. This also makes it faster to knit. :) Although it *does* involve some tricky colorwork at the yoke, so that will pose a bit of a challenge. I'm going to be knitting it in Knit Picks Comfy, which is a Pima cotton/acrylic blend, and the colors will be Seafoam (main color), Honeydew, Bison, and Ivory, a very beachy/seashell inspired palette.

I couldn't possibly be more excited. When I woke up this morning (exhausted, because Anne is getting a new molar and needed some cuddles at 4 am) I remembered the Games and my project and I got that excited feeling in my stomach, like when you're a kid and you wake up on the first day of your vacation.

The mass cast-on (couldn't you just die?!) is set for Friday at 4 pm EST, when the opening ceremonies officially begin in London. 

Did I mention that I was excited?

Saint feast days...

The feast of Sts. Anne and Joachim is coming up on Thursday. Does anybody celebrate patron saint feast days with your kids? What types of things do you do?

I made a big deal with Hank this year on the feast of St. Henry earlier this month, but we didn't end up doing anything special because it was too hot to bake. I was thinking we could do a joint saint celebration on St. Anne's day (I'm sure she doesn't mind sharing :)).

Do you make something? Food? A craft? Inquiring minds want to know.

Another year of VBS, and some baby knitting...

This morning I dropped Henry off for his first day of Vacation Bible School at our parish. He acted a bit shy, but was happily playing Bible Bingo when I left. The theme this year is national park-related, and Henry's age range is the beaver group, how cute is that?

Mike was relieved to have his mornings free for five days, so I'm happy that this eases his load a bit. Well, "free" as in one less child running around, but he still has Anne, who is a full fledged terror at this point. If it can be climbed, she will climb it. And probably fall off of it. And when you forcibly take her off of it, she will whine and complain and cry all the day long. She's been very challenging of late. VERY CHALLENGING.

As for me, I can finally post my baby knitting, since my sister's baby shower was this past weekend. I made 2 hat and sweater sets, one in pumpkin and one in blueberry:

A Dreamcatcher Baby Blanket:

And 3 sets of matching bibs and wash cloths with animals on them, like this duck set:

I had fun.

This is my kind of weather, and ponderings on Church weddings...

Ah, the past few days have been overcast and breezy. I love this kind of weather. Clearly, I should be living in the Pacific Northwest.

There has also been some "rain activity" but I wouldn't actually classify it as "RAIN," unfortunately. I mean, little drops have come down, but they never pick up their pace nor last for longer than 10 minutes at a stretch, so total accumulation is something like .000567 %. This is not going to make the grass green again, people. Maybe if it kept doing this for 3 weeks straight, but I'm doubting that will be the case. At any rate, I'm grateful for the break in the heat and the hope of rain, so I'll take it.

On a totally unrelated note, I read an article last week about Katie Holmes coming back to her Catholic faith. Did anybody else see this? It was from a reliable source like Yahoo News *rolls eyes* so I take it with a grain of salt, but it piqued my interest because I had always wondered about this.

I knew that Katie Holmes had been raised Catholic, and that when she married Tom Cruise, they were married in a Scientology ceremony. These are the only two facts that I'm certain of, you see. Thus, everything else that I'm about to say is pure conjecture, but that's what blogs are for, no?

When they married, I remember thinking to myself, "her parents must be heartbroken that she's leaving her faith." I don't know the Holmeses, so I have no earthly idea how they felt about their daughter's marriage, but this is how *I* would have felt. I'm also presuming here that Katie did not pursue and receive a dispensation from canonical form, because if she had, then her marriage would have been valid in the Church. So, I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but bear with me.

My whole point is that the situation got me to thinking about our children retaining their faith as adults. I pray for this intention weekly at Mass, that my children always stay close to Jesus and His Church. Do I think that in order to do that, my children need to marry other Catholics? No, I don't think that, actually. Would it help if they did marry other Catholics? Yes. But is such a marriage *necessary* for them to remain Catholic or even grow deeper in their faith? No, I don't think that it is.

But presuming that Katie here didn't seek out her parish priest prior to her wedding to receive Catholic marriage preparation and a dispensation to marry outside of a Catholic ceremony, this is what I'm getting at. When a Catholic person does not seek out the Church for their marriage, and marries outside of Her authority, that makes me sad. Because that's often the impetus to them leaving their faith entirely. In that state, they cannot receive the sacraments, and without the sacraments, their faith will suffer. Plus, the fact that the person didn't care enough to go through the Church for the dispensation demonstrates (at least in my opinion) that they don't feel very attached to their faith to begin with. And as a parent, this would break my heart.

Many times, it seems to me that the people I see not pursuing a Church wedding lose interest in religious faith altogether. This would bother me the most. It would bother me considerably less if my child became a member of another church. And even that has degrees. I would rather they stayed Catholic, but if my child became a very devout Anglican or Methodist, I would be ok with that. (But I'll just admit that I'd always still pray they would return to their Catholic roots :)). I would struggle, however, if they became a member of a non-Christian faith, probably nearly as much as if they lost all faith in God entirely.

In the end, all we can do is pray. Once they become adults, it's their choice, and we have to hope that something we did as parents acts a springboard to them making their faith their own and growing in their relationship with God.

This is all a bit rambling, but back to Katie. According to Yahoo News, she is now a registered parishoner at a local Catholic Church. If true, I think this is good, and I'm sure her parents are thrilled. :)

So, our thought-provoking question for the weekend: what in your childhood (if anything) caused you to remain attracted to religious faith as an adult? Or alternatively, what in your childhood acted as a spark to reignite your religious faith after leaving it for a time?

Adventures in my yarn stash, and what's new with Anne?

So, Anne. She's weaned. It's definite this time. When I think about it I start to cry, so I try to focus on the positives. She wasn't interested in nursing anymore, and nursing should be a mutual desire between you and the child. She was ready to let go. Just because I wasn't doesn't mean that I should press her on it. So I let it go. But it hurts.

She's very independent these days, and this is translating into some serious sauciness. All of a sudden, if you pick her up and she wants to stay put, she throws her head back, kicks her legs, and squawks. Hand her something she doesn't want? She *slaps* it away. Poor Sophie the giraffe received such treatment this morning. She's still my precious sweet pea, but definitely a sassy one these days.

Yesterday, I brought her into our all purpose guest room/office with me while Mike and Henry attended his swimming lesson at the local YMCA. She's usually not allowed in there during the day, because this is where we keep things that we don't want her to touch. The room is nice because it's on the first floor, so it's very convenient, we can close the door to keep the baby out, and it just provides us with nice extra space. I keep my yarn and knitting needles in the closet in this room. The closet is also home to several belly dance costumes, a sword, an iron, a yarn swift and winder, and our vacuum cleaner. Like I said, multi-purpose.

I'd been dying to get my hot little hands on my yarn bins for some time. I've been itching to sort through things and see what I had in there so I could start planning for holiday gifts. I know what I have set aside for large items like sweaters and shawls, but I also have lots of leftover partial skeins and such that I knew I could put to use for other projects. In particular, I am in need of several colors of cotton, and I felt certain I may have some of them buried within the bins. I wanted to get all the partial skeins together into bags sorted by fiber. This = Type A, I know.

So, I let Anne in there, and immediately she began a bonanza of pulling DVD's down off of the shelves in there, but oh well. I got the bins out and began to sort. Wool, alpaca, silk and blends of this ilk in one bin, cotton and acrylic and blends with these in another. All the little partial skeins were placed into large Ziploc bags together, cotton in one, wool in another.

We'll just say that the wool bin is, ah hem, full. The cotton and acrylic bin actually had a luxurious amount of space in it. I was able to get rid of some things that just weren't doing it for me anymore, and I felt very proud. I discovered several cotton skeins that I can put to use right away with my holiday project ideas.

Pleased with my results, I hid PLACED the bins back into the closet. I'm all excited now about my holiday knitting. It's all very secretive, so I can't reveal anything about it for quite some time. And I know you're all just *dying* to see it, but alas.

It'll only get better when I can actually knit without sweating, but we're getting there. Still no rain.

*huffy sigh*

DROUGHT

I know that much of the country has been experiencing drought conditions this summer, and western New York is no exception.

"It looks like we're growing wheat out in the front yard."

...was Mike's comment the other day, as he narrowed his eyes. We're not really big "grass people." Did that come out right? I mean, we don't have a sprinkler system nor pamper our grass. But it would be nice if the grass were green, I don't think that's too much to ask.

The grass everywhere here is almost totally brown. The campus really looks abysmal. They are clearly trying to keep the main entrance with the sign and flowers looking nice and are watering everything. But the rest is too vast to water and is brown, brown, brown.

I think when it finally does rain I'll go outside and turn my face right into it. I like rain. It's cozy. And the living things outside need it in order to grow. Rain gets a bad rap, but we need to be honest:

Rain is good. I miss rain.

Rain, rain, how I long to see your face...