I finished my socks

Well, I finished the toe on my second sock last night. For some crazy reason I am totally underwhelmed. For the life of me I don't know why. They are beautiful, soft, have matching stripes, are even, and fit great. I always imagined that I would throw a party when I finished my first pair and yet I remain reserved and "enh" about the whole situation. I don't know why. It is very sad actually. Maybe it will hit me after I'm done with all this intense work training and I can actually breath again.

I have a fair amount of the sock yarn left and I don't quite know what to do with it. I wonder if I have enough for some baby booties or something. If anyone has some suggestions I'm all ears.

I am now working on a pattern for my friend Nassau (pronounced Na-s-ow {like when you hurt yourself LOL!} ) I hope she likes it. Y'all will have to wait until I am done to find out what I'm making b/c she has access to this site now.

Well, I'm off to knit, relax, and then sleep.

Eileen

Where have I been?

Hey y'all! I know, I know I haven't blogged in a while. I couldn't even believe it myself when I saw that I last posted on March 19th, almost two whole weeks ago!!!! American Airlines has been kicking my butt! I can't even tell you most of what I've done in th last couple weeks other than work, eat, sleep, eat and repeat every day.

I will tell you about a visit I had from an old friend of mine. I've known this guy for over 17 years. I haven't seen him though since my wedding b/c he lives in Tennessee and I lived in Texas and now Arizona. He is an engineer who was doing a building inspection up in Phoenix and drove down to Tucson so we could have dinner together. It was good to see him and we promised each other not to go another 4 years w/out seeing each other. Hopefully we'll stick to that!

Another thing that happened is computer monitor issues. My monitor screen has turned yellow. I am going to buy a new cable cord to see if my cat chewing on it (the cord not the monitor!) is why it's gone wonky. Here's hoping I don't have to buy a new monitor.

I got my schedule for work for April 19th through June 20th. It is 4PM to 12:30AM Friday-Monday. I am off Tues-Thurs. It shouldn't be too bad b/c I'll have a day off with Len. It is going to be weird working nights after having worked early days for 6 weeks but I'll adjust.

Finally in knitting news my camera is still battery-less so alas no photos yet, but I am almost done with my second sock, I have knit 2 March mid-month KAL washcloths, and am making decent progress on my shawl. Overall, I'm pretty happy with what I have accomplished. All except my blogging of course which should start to get better. I am no where near as exhausted as I have been on the last 2 Fridays so I hope this is a good sign.

Thank you for reading this (if anyone still is LOL) and have a great weekend.

Eileen

I have a sock!

Hello. Just when i think I'm not going to be tired I end up exhausted. So this is just a brief posting to say I have finished my first sock and have cast on the second already. I also finished the second clue on my mystery shawl., and am almost done w/ my mid-month dishcloth. I promise to have pic by the end of the week.

Eileen

This week was just a blur

Hello. Well, my first week of training is finally over. It is going well and I totally love this job. But I am sooooooo tired. I have to be up by 5:30 AM to get to work before 7:00AM then we work until 3:30PM and I get home by 4:00-4:30 depending on traffic. I then want to take a nap but if I do then I'm up until Midnight or later and have few hours to sleep for the "night". I think I am finally on a decent schedule but we shall see.

On the bright side. I have been knitting everyday. I work on my mystery shawl during breaks at work and have been working on my first sock in the evenings. As you read in my previous post I had some issues starting but it is finally coming out decent. I realized that I was knitting the sock inside out (which makes it a tight squeeze!) but b/c its a tube (and tubes are AWESOME!) I was able to just flip it inside out and continue on. I did the heel flap and gusset today and am now knitting the foot part. I have 3-4" to go before I start the decrease for toes. I really like it. There are some small glitches but it's to be expected. I am still proud that I am accomplishing it. I will take a pic of what I have so far tomorrow and will try to better document my second sock.

Thanks for being patient with my not posting. I hope I haven't lost all my readers (all 4 of you HAHAHAHA) by being away. Once training at work is done I will work 4 days on and 3 days off so I should be less exhausted!

Eileen

I am actually attempting socks!!

Hello all. Well as promised I am writing a new posting in less than 2 days. Yea me! Training @ American Airlines is going well. I got a 100% on my city code test. I was so nervous but I guess I really shouldn't have been. I turned the test in 3 minutes after I got it. I know that sounds fast (and it is) but I've always done that with tests. I stop studying the night before and then I just let the ink flow on paper and somehow the right answers (usually) magically come out and I do a quick review and just turn it in. I've never been one to hold on to an exam and stress over it. I do all my stressing before and then after while waiting for the results LOL!!! Then I had to go wait in the cafeteria and was shaking like crazy. It was really funny now that it's over. I think I will really enjoy this job. I like what I am learning so far.

Also, as I stated above I have started knitting socks. I was having such a hard time knitting in the round. I have realized that I was not connecting my last stitch to my first correctly. I don't quite know how to explain what I was doing, but I will try. After casting on my stitches and dividing them I was starting my round in the last stitch that I cast on and went that way around the circle instead of starting with the first stitch I cast on. I hope that makes sense. I'm not awesome like techknitter or the yarn harlot in the ways of making visual aids to explain what I am saying. But finally after taking it out 9 times I figured out what I was doing wrong and now have about an inch of cuff and it's nice and even and circular and not twisted and funky. So I learned something new. That is always a positive when knitting so woo-hoo. Hopefully I'll have some pics to post tomorrow.

Have a great day,

Eileen

Felted Mice

Well, my cats love their new mice flaws and all. I have made so many minor mistakes on each of these mice but it's OK. The first mouse I made is a "dwarf" mouse b/c I didn't see where it said to knit in st st for 2 & 1/2 inches before decreasing for head, so Corky got this:

My second mouse came out OK and obviously Max loves it b/c his fur is all over it:
My cat Emma on the other hand is apparently slightly evil. I sprinkled some cat nip through out each mice just for my cats enjoyment. Well while I was stuffing them Emma was salivating and trying to eat the entire container of cat nip so I guess no one should be shocked that this is what her mouse's face looked like mere minutes after I gave it to her.

Poor mouse!!! I have since performed surgery but it no longer has a nose just s seam to keep the stuffing hidden.

In my last post I stated that I had knit 2 mice for each cat. That is true I just haven't stuffed the others yet but here they are flat:

Tomorrow if blogger behaves I will post some pic of our home re-modeling.

My brother is home from Iraq for R&R and the chaos that surrounded the event

Hey everyone. Sorry it's been several days but I went out of town unexpectedly. My brother, after 4 days of crazy travel, finally landed in the States Thursday morning. I wasn't going to get to see him while he was here (Texas) due to finances and schedule conflicts. However, Linda (my MIL) who works for American Airlines saw an opening for a flight @ 5:50 AM that would land 45 min after my brothers flight @ DFW airport. She was going to meet him there anyways. So she was going to bring him to my gate to surprise him, since he wasn't supposed to leave DFW for Austin until 4:00 pm. However some gate officials greeted his flight and said there was a flight leaving in 10 min so he took it. He didn't even get to see my MIL before he left. So it looked like I came all that way for nothing. He called his girlfriend Naema when he got on his new flight and she told him I was on my way but he was already on his plane and couldn't get off. She called my MIL and then when my plane landed she told me what happened and I was pissed. (That is really an understatement, but I try to keep thing PG on here LOL!) Well, when he landed in Austin he called me and said that after Naema dealt with her RCIA candidate (A person who is in the process of converting to Catholicism) they would drive to Dallas. They arrived around 10:30 that night. We stayed up until 3:00 am playing Trivial Pursuit and looking at photos and videos from Iraq.

While we spent the day waiting for Patrick the weather decided to dump 5" of snow on DFW and the surrounding areas. All the flights for the rest of the day were cancelled. That meant that if Patrick hadn't gotten on his flight he wouldn't have been able to leave so it was lucky he got out when he did, but it also meant he had to drive through the mess to get back to me. That also meant that the 8:00 am flight I was supposed to take back to Tucson on Friday morining was highly unlikely. I ended up being # 87 on the stand-by list. It looked as though I wouldn't get out until Sunday night.

So instead Patrick took Naema and me to breakfast. Then we had a snowball fight, got in trouble at CVS, and then they left to get Naema back in time for her afternoon class. All in all a good time was had by everyone. I didn't cry at all. It was kinda weird, it actually felt like I had just seen him even though he's been gone for over 10 months. Very surreal, but also probably had to do with the fact that I'd only had 4 hours of sleep in a 36 hours period.

I then spent the day knitting my mystery shawl. I'm still over a week behind but what are you going to do? My MIL kept checking in letting me know that the flights were not looking any better. Then @ 4:00 PM she said are you ready to go? I said yes, (which was a lie but I know how to hustle when necessary!) and she said good b/c you need to be at the airport and through security by 4:45 b/c it looks like you will get on this next flight. So I hopped in the shower & was at the airport @ 4:35. Fortunately I didn't have any bags to check but the security line was crazy long. I got to the gate while Final boarding was occurring. I looked at the screen and saw that there was 15 people ahead of my on the stand-by list. I thought this isn't going to happen. Long story short they called a bunch of names and no one came to the counter so I got on the flight and made it home and here I am. I was so tired at the end of all this excitement that I went to sleep at Midnight last night and didn't wake up until noon today. Crazy!!!!

In other news, I got my box from Knit Picks on Tuesday, but spent most of the day at my grandparents so I didn't get to do much with it. Then Wednesday I was knitting some mice for my cats (2 each) when I got the call that I was going to get to see my brother. I had just finished hand felting them and they have been sitting on a towel for 2 & 1/2 days. After I am done here I will check on them and finish them and will post pics tomorrow.

Also, Donna posted this (scroll down to Monday March 3rd) on her blog about my book tour blog posting. I was so excited by the kind things she had to say! I was really nervous but I guess what I decided to do was the right thing after all. I really need to work on my whole self confidence thing.

Lastly, I start my new job on Monday. I work from 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM. In light of this I am making a promise to my readers and myself that I will continue knitting and will also blog more consistently. I am so sorry that I have been so sporadic the last few weeks!

Have a great weekend!

Eileen

Today we welocme Donna Druchunas author of Kitty Knits

Good Afternoon everyone. Today I'm doing a special blog posting as part of Donna's blog tour to promote her newest book Kitty Knits: projects for cats and their people.


I was so excited when I received her latest book and so were my cats. Especially Corky (below) who thinks that he is the cat on the cover and decided he should "pose" with himself.
In the beginning I didn't know what I'd talk about today but decided I would review some of the projects that I have in my "queue" to make for myself, my cats, and as gifts. As an opener though I asked Donna to tell us a little about the book itself.

"Kitty Knits is the first knitting book entirely devoted to the funny, furry felines in our lives. Discover creative ways to knit up practical projects for kitties to love and cat-themed designs for owners to enjoy. Just like cat batting at a ball of yarn, it's a perfect match.Over 20 projects feature items for cats, their people, and their homes -- along with adorable photos of cats with their knitted treasures. Choose from toys, beds, mats, and more for cats, plus feline-inspired sweaters, hats, pillows, and bags for cat-loving knitters.Find projects in a variety of styles and skill levels, from felted designs to Fair Isle patterns."

I have only been knitting for just over a year, and there are many things I have yet to attempt. I feel that these are part of what have drawn me to the items I want to make.

The first item that caught my eye are the felted mice (seen on the cover). I have ordered the supplies online and they got lost in transit so I wasn't able to start on them for today, but will post as soon as they come in and are started. This project is rated easy and is made from the tail up. I chose the mice because first my cats went a little crazy batting at the page with them on it, but also b/c this will be my first time using dpn's (double pointed needles for you non-knitters), making i-cord, and felting. (yes, I have a lobster to felt but it will be a race to see which project gets finished first LOL) I have always wanted to try i-cord and I feel extra excited that I will be presenting my the project with said "firsts" to my babies.

The next item that I plan to make (that will also be for my kitties) is the Bulls-eye cat bed.

I chose this bed out of all the other bed options b/c it seemed to suit my cats the best. This project is rated as intermediate and is made from the sides inward to the center. I was intrigued by this pattern b/c it will be my first attempt at knitting in the round. I have used circular needles many times but always for flat items. It will also be my first experiment with multiple stranding and using stitch markers. I am looking forward to making 3 of these so my cats won't fight over them!

The next project I will review is the felted applique pillow.

"This unique pillow front is knit in intarsia color work. The leaves, branches, and berries are made separately. Everything is felted, and then the decorations are sewn on as appliques." This project is also rated as intermediate. I know someone who will love this pillow and it will totally match her furniture. I have knit using the intarsia method before. My friends can quote me saying "I will never do intarsia again for a long, long time." However this project is much smaller than the last project I did, it is only 3 colors, and is only 40 rows wide by 59 rows high that are done with all 3 colors, the rest is just 2 and is totally doable. The most intriguing part is after I felt a rectangle of color I will cut that piece to make the bird. I've never cut my knitting before so it will definitely be interesting.

The final project I will talk about today is "the cat" afghan.

Yet again I chose an item with the intermediate level. This project is awesome in so many ways. The center is a beautiful delicate lace, and then the borders have "the cat" in multiple languages. I was nervous thinking about all the intarsia that must be done to make the sides. However, I discovered that the different words are placed on the border using duplicate stitch. Donna provides excellent charts that help you know exactly where to place the stitches to make it look as beautiful as it does in the picture. Anyone with an appreciation of cats will adore this afghan.

These are just a few of the many projects in this amazing book. I'm sure at some point I will have made all of them.

In closing, I'd like to profusely thank Donna for allowing me to be a part of her tour. I will cherish this book for many, many years to come. If after reading my reviews you say I have to have this book for myself click this link to get a signed copy of this book.I hope you and your cats will derive much pleasure and some bonding experiences from making these projects.

Until next time have an awesome day,

Eileen AKA Purling Kitty

The Wedding was amazing (and the rest of my week)

So the last several days went by in a blur.

Wednesday I picked up my newly altered dress. Then I bought Len a mini rose bush. I don't know why I did it (meaning I didn't have a specific reason) I just wanted to.

Then I finished my mad dash of cleaning to be ready for Jess and Jacob. They arrived and now agree that my house is way smaller than theirs. We hung out, Jess answered my knitting questions and then we went out to eat. We went to Sweet Tomatoes. It was really good. We had a nice time talking and Jess and Jacob haven't seen Len since the wedding so it was nice for them to catch up.

Thursday was spent learning how to crochet. I know, I know. Crocheting isn't knitting but I had no choice. I needed to make some stars for a blanket and the knitted pattern I had just wasn't working. The crochet pattern gave me the perfect 5 pointed star I needed. Then I knit my shawl while watching Lost. Yeah, don't do that. I ended up frogging my clue back to my life line. (I will try it again later today). Lost has been so amazing. It is finally getting back to what it was in the first and second season. I couldn't be more wrapped up in a show (except maybe for American Idol!).

Friday I was sick. My stomach just wasn't behaving. I don't know why. All I really remember from the day was making egg salad and going out to eat w/ Len's co-workers. I didn't eat much but I went because I didn't want to let anyone down.

Then yesterday was the wedding. We had such a good time. Jen was beautiful.

We got there early and got dressed. Then we hung out in Jared's room while the bride did the pre-wedding photo shoot. Then we all traipsed down to the ceremony area. As soon as I started getting escorted by a groomsman to my seat I started crying.

--It was so emotional. The setting was beautiful, but I couldn't help thinking of Paula. She is Jessie, Jared (the groom) and Dani's mom. She passed away a little over a year ago. As the bride said during her speech "Paula would have LOVED this wedding."--

Then the ceremony started and the bridesmaid's processed to "Going to the Chapel" everyone laughed. It was so funny and sweet. The ceremony lasted between 5-10 min. Then we headed to the reception. There was music, dancing, crying, laughing and t-shirts. They couple had shirts made that say "Mr. & Mrs Fry Est. 03/01/08" on the front and the back says "I do. Jared and Jennifer Fry March 1, 2008 Francisco Grande Resort Casa Grande, AZ" I'll post a pic soon. We sat w/ Jess, Doug (Jess's dad), Grandma (Paula's mom), Mary Kay (Paula's best friend), and Mike (Doug's friend from work). The best part was the toast from the Best Man and Maid of Honor. The saddest part was when Jared danced w/ his grandma. Everyone at our table was sobbing (except Jess who refuses to cry) b/c we all knew he should be dancing w/ Paula. I hated knowing exactly how they felt seeing as how my Mom died before I got married as well, but it was nice that we could all support each other. Most of Paula's family was there and they are all great people it was nice to see them again (and meet the ones I hadn't yet.)

--Paula, we love you, miss you, and know that you were with all of us in spirit yesterday. Hope you enjoyed watching you son and new daughter. Say hi to my mom for me. Love, Eileen--

Any hoo, enough of my typing through tears. Jared and Jenn are the best and they are so good together. I love Jess's family and I'm so grateful that they have accepted me (even if not willingly at times LOL) into their lives. I will close with some random wedding photos and promise to back to knitting promptly.

Eileen

Dani and Jared
Jess (wearing a triangle shawl she made) and Jared
The cake w/ a Lego bride and groom that Jared had custom made.
Jared dancing w/ grandma.
Jen &Paula's brother Don.