Diamonds and Dogwood

I've been on a roll this last week. I bought the PVC pipe and joinings to make my own home made knitty noddy, I've dyed some light weight sock yarn, done some color tests on other yarn and been working hard on a few knitting projects.

I got stalled on my 10 stitch blanket because I bought all the yarn from my yarn shop and they had no more and had to order more.  That should be in on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. I am looking forward to getting back to work on it.

My knitty noddy was fun to make. My son helped me out by holding the pipe while I used a hacksaw to cut the lengths I wanted. I realize after I made it that I should have bought the 1/2 inch pipe and not the 3/4 inch, but it will work all the same. I put the yarn back on the noddy to ball it. Next on my list of things to make at home is a lazy susan ball winder. I just need to save up enough to buy the parts I need.

I dyed the yarn for a bookmark for my sons teacher for an end of the year gift. I used Wilton frosting dye and sea salt for the mordant on it. I picked the colors to try and create a fade from pink to yellow. It is of course WAY MORE than I need for a bookmark, so I am trying to think of what else to make with it. It is too thin for hexipuffs, maybe more lace or some baby socks.

I don't like how the bookmark came out, so I will probably make a new one.



I started a shawl just because I have always wanted a super pretty one to have. I found a pattern that didn't look too hard for a first one. It it the Freya shawl from Ravelry. I loved the design with the increases happening throughout so the pattern was circular.

And I found out that a good friend of mine is expecting his second grandson so I am making him a blanket for the little guy. His family is a big fan of baseball and really like the LA Angels. I am doing a nod to baseball diamonds by making a diamond pattern, and then a baseball itself by doing it white and there will be a red stitch around the edge. I hope they like it. I wanted it to be pretty without being OMGBASEBALL.

I am really enjoying dying my own yarn. I think I may want to dye some and see if I can sell it. That might be a good way to bring in a little bit of extra money for some fun things. I will start small. They have some nice superwash wool at my yarn shop for a good price, I will buy three of them and dye them in a few popular colors and see if I can sell it on Etsy. If they sell, I will use that money to buy three more and go from there!

I wonder what colors I should start with. I am inspired by spring. I have a vision of a light green fading to a medium green, then a white space, a gentle pink fading out into white again. I was watching the dogwood flowers bloom and they just felt like the whole reason why spring even existed this year for me.

I Need a Happy

Feels like it has been forever since I wrote. So much has happened in the last.. what. Nine? Ten days?

Since coming home from Easter the household has been in a state of uncontrolled chaos. In an attempt to control it I am going to see if I can put it into some semblance of order here.

Evie regressed with sleep issues. The trip seemed to put her back to the place where she was staying up as late as she could and getting up early. It has meant that our 6pm baby bedtime was now a 10pm baby bed time after 4 hours of crying and being tired on her part but refusing to sleep. We've decided to skip her naps and do some Doctor reccomended sleep restriction to get her back to going to bed at a normal time and not being up super late.

A few months ago we were all ragged from her sleep problems. She would go to bed and then wake up 20-25 times a night. No that isn't a typo. She was up that much most nights. We lived on 15 minute increments of sleep that were split up by 10 minute sessions of Evie waking up screaming, tossing, turning, thrashing, banging her body into her crib, or when put into bed with us, banging into us. We were bruised, bloody lipped from being slammed with her head in the face, tired, and so totally over it. We learned that no one believed she had a sleep problem.

We were told that WE were the problem for trying to help her sleep. We had tried cry it out (vomit. fountains of vomit. She gags when she cries for longer than a couple minutes, even when shes NOT trying to sleep.), we had tried so many methods of sleep training, we had tried each one for long enough to give it time to work before giving up, and finally we turned to a doctor only to find that it took over 8 months to see a pediatric sleep specialist because of wait lists.

I fought so hard to get her seen. I called every sleep place within 50 miles. I e-mailed, I wrote letters, I called our doctor once a week every week until she finally put in the damn referral to a specialist for us. We finally got in to see someone. He said that she did have a problem, but at her age it was not safe to medicate her. All we could do was to not let her sleep until she was sooooo tired she slept. Four days of hell where she only slept 6 hours a day, and finally she slept. She slept 11 hours a night, but no naps. Then she started adding in naps. Once she napped, she is now not sleeping at night. So in the interest of actually getting some sleep, we are dropping naps. I do not want to do another 9 months of hell.

Of course, her sleep issues mean she is cranky all day long. She bites, throws, hits people. She screams and whines non-stop for hours on end and nothing soothes her. She plays the pick me up so I can whine to be put down so I can whine to be picked up so I can slap you in the mouth game. She is a little terror in a tutu.

Liam is going through a phase where his emotional age is that of a two year old and he is throwing tantrums over doing things he once did with glee. He is disobeying us AS we are telling him not to do something. He is not listening to anything, throwing toys and food and anything that we ask him to give back to his sister after he grabs it out of her hands..... it is just something extra I am having a hard time dealing with right now.

With all of this going on, I got the news that on the 24th that my Grandma fell and broke her femur up near her hip. It took two days for them to do the surgery because of the blood thinner my grandma takes. They had to wait until it was at a lower level in her body.

THEN, the first facility she was in after being released (because of course Kaiser won't let anyone stay in the hospital until they are well enough to leave, they just kick them out as fast as possible no matter what.) was HORRIBLE! she was ignored while screaming and crying for help, she had dropped the call button and couldn't see to pick it up (she is losing her sight) and she was thirsty and had no water, can't get out of bed and is screaming for help and NO ONE CAME for HOURS. Her daughter came by after work to check on her and found her like this crying for help. Ten minutes later my mom came and had the job of ripping someone a new one for treating an 89 year old lady like that.

They got her transferred to a new, much better facility, yesterday night. She finally got a good nights sleep, though my mom still is not leaving her side. Hopefully she will be better soon. I wish I could be there to help. But Evie is sick right now and I don't want to bring anything bad to grandma, plus I know the kids would be just too much for her. Even in small doses... and then I wouldn't be ANY help because I would be trying to keep my little turkeys from being traffic hazards in the hallways.

My lovely Grandma

And then, to top it all off, my 14 year old kitty, Mister Kitty, who for the last 5 years has lived with my best friend because he (yes the kitty) brought home a stray kitty who got attached to him and they couldn't be apart and that was just too many cats for me to handle..... well.... Mister apparently had a very aggressive form of oral cancer. He broke a tooth and we were crowdfunding to raise the money for his surgery, but when they started the surgery they found that most of his tongue was taken up with a tumor that had not been there even two weeks ago during a check on his tooth. We made the choice to euthanize him. I held him as he left us.

Mr. Kitty

No. I am not ok. I have some weird sort of emotional hangover feeling. I am so angry and sad right now. I want to be in California with my grandma, but not only can I not afford that really, having the kids there would just stress her out. I lost a kitty. My daughter isn't sleeping, also has a cold and is the crankiest thing on two legs. My son is just not listening and picking the WORST time to test the boundaries.

I need a win. I need a happy. I need something GOOD to happen beyond the good of making it through another day without running screaming into the street. Or maybe a kindly family of wolves to come raise my children for me for a week.

10 Stitches of Patience

I have now started three blankets for a baby my friend is having. She lives far away and has a baby due in.... gosh, six more weeks now. And I wanted to make her a blanket for this one.

I started one but ended up not loving the yarn or the pattern so I put it aside. Then I started another one, but the color changes were a bit above my skill level at the moment and I was being crazy and making it up on my own, so I had no pattern to fall back on.

That blanket now lives in a Duplo box, half finished and destined to be pulled apart and turned into something else. Maybe a cute hat.....

A couple weeks ago at knitting one of the more advanced knitters, who has a Knitting Super Power of somehow remembering EVERYTHING she has ever learned about knitting and always being willing to stop and help anyone, was making a 10 stitch blanket.

It starts off as 10 stitches knitting each row, then turning a corner with short rows and continuing on going around and around.

I had some DK yarn I had bought with the intent of making slippers for my son, but decided that I didn't like the colors on it for slippers. It lived in my stash for a few months until I needed something with changing colors to make this blanket.

The blanket started out easily, going fast and corners were turned rapidly, it grew in size and then it slowed down. Each side feels like it takes forever now. But so far that is my only complaint about this blanket! I am even daring to learn to knit backwards sometimes, though my confidence in this is shaky.

The blue line is where it started.
I might have to knit some toy cars with this,
it reminds me of a little race track or game board.

I am not sure how much bigger this will get, though I did buy two more balls of yarn for it! I am hoping to finish it in time, but I have had a few things interfere.

Wound up with a migraine yesterday that has left me feeling icky all day and long into the night and now this morning all I have the brain power for is rambling on here. And all this beautiful sunshine (which may have been the cause of my headache!) has had my family rushing out into spring at top speed because WOW is it gorgeous out there. But, there is no way to knit outside with two kiddos who get into everything dangerous the moment I get out the yarn.

I did get a suggestion that I should crochet myself a sun hat, since I can not find one that fits me in the store. That project might have to take precedence to the blanket... I am sure that my friend will not mind if it is a little bit late!