Hi there again

Yes I've been MIA lately here... sorry.. I have 2 kids that are about to turn 2 next week and they keep me pretty much hopping lately. Plus I've been knitting the sock. I made it to 7" this week (go Me). Time to call up the person who is teaching me and tell her I'm ready for the next part.

Some cute kid-isms of late:

Anna: (after attempting to slide down a 2 step stool and finding herself on the floor) What happened?

Anna: (after climbing the stairs to daycare without me after I told her to sit on the stairs while I got Lily out of the car) Hooray Anna !!

Lily: I peed.. (big smile on her face)

Me: Ok girls time to get out of the tub. the water is all gone
Lily: (pees in the now empty tub)

Anna : How are you?

Anna: Wait Wait

Lily: Caillou (this one must be at top decibel while watching Caillou) That's Me!

Anna or Lily (while watching Sid the Science Kid) : Friends!!!

What else???? Well I'm getting ready for my second ever Mother's Day 5K road race on Mother's Day. Last year was the first time I'd ever run in it and I had never ran before it. Even though I've been running in a few races since and even joined the local running club, I am so unprepared for this race. Hopefully I'll have a better time than last year which was at least 45 minutes. At least this year I know the route and where to go..

I'm also in the midst of planning a Birthday Party for Anna and Lily's Second Birthday. Originally I was going to go with a Rubber Ducky theme but then I realized that the girls would probably like an Elmo cake and theme instead. So we'll be doing that instead. I already have the cake pan and just need to get the party supplies.

I'll post pictures after we have the party.

Sock it to me

I started knitting a pair of socks approximately 2 weeks ago.. It's slow going especially since I kept losing stitches all over the place but I think I have finally conquered that little bump in the road. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I had won the lessons at the auction last year and kept putting off starting them... if I had known how fun they were going to be I might have tried to get to them earlier.

In other somewhat related news... Lily is showing signs that she might follow in Mommy's footsteps and knit someday. I'm forever finding her in my stash of knitting books and going through them... maybe she just likes the pictures.

Totally Random Stuff

Not sure what to really say but I feel the need to blog tonight..

Easter went basically well. The girls got nice baskets from Grandma and their Cousins for Easter this year. As per usual not much that they'd actually enjoy but tons that Lee and I would (at least from Grandma). My brother was nice to me and played with the girls and helped me with them quite a bit.

Lee and I took the girls to the park at Lake Quanapowitt on Saturday since it was such a nice day. We got totally surprised while there when the Easter Bunny showed up. Lily's reaction was priceless... I wish we'd had the video camera with us.. at first she ran towards the bunny and then realized that the bunny was HUGE and stopped quickly maybe 3 feet from him or her. Anna on the other hand didn't mind getting close to the bunny but stopped within a foot from the bunny.

I started working on knitting my first pair of socks today. The lessons are from last year's church auction. I feel like it took me forever to get to the point where I could start them and my teacher was very patient with me while I was learning how to work with double pointed needles. Once I got started working on them, it seems to be somewhat easy to do so far. We'll see how I feel about the ease of knitting them once I get into the heart of them and have to work on the heel flap and turning the heel.

Ta Da...

I finished the Ruffle Hats for the girls and now need to start my next project... SOCKS.. I had purchased sock lessons at the Auction last year and so far hadn't gotten around to using them yet. That will change very very soon..

So do you want to see pictures of the hats??? I know that you do... so here you go...





That's Lily wearing the yellow one (and my arm around her) and Anna who is rocking the pink one. The hats match the Party Dresses that I was making for them.

So now I have nothing to knit with the exception of 2 blankets that I've been working on for a small while that I have no problem taking my time knitting.

Call me Crazy

I finished sewing Dress #2 yesterday during American Idol (there wasn't much on)... So today I attempted to sew the buttons onto both dresses but ran into a problem with my needle so I had to put them aside. I have been working on the blankets that I mentioned last time and frankly I needed a challenge of something new. Something that I haven't tried to do before but hopefully quick.. so I looked through my patterns and found one for a Ruffle Hat and then saw that I had 3 extra skeins of yarn from Dress #1 leftover. So I decided to start the Ruffle Hat.

It's going so quick and shaping up quite well. My only regret so far is that I'm not knitting it in the round even though I'm using a circular needle. Maybe on the next one that I make since if I'm using yarn from Dress #1 then I need to make one with yarn from Dress #2 also.

Here's what the Ruffle Hat will look like when it's done (the yarn used in the website photo that I found just happens to be the same Yarn that I used for Dress #2):

MIA

Sorry about that... I've been MIA from the blog lately.. but for good reasons..





I've been working really hard on my knitting lately and trying to get the dresses for Anna and Lily done. I've had the first dress mostly done for a while now.. even started to sew the pieces together but then decided that I needed to work on the second dress before I went much further. Well last night at my knitting group I finished all the pieces for Dress #2 and when I got home I became a sewing fiend. I sewed the shoulders of dress #2 and even sewed in the collar pieces before I realized that I needed to pick up stitches to make the button band for it. I can't remember how I did this on the first dress. So I decided to switch gears and try to at least get the sleeves of dress #1 sewn on. Well I got some of that done before I went into panic mode because the one and only picture of the dress that I have (on the cover of the booklet) didn't show how the sleeves are supposed to be sewn in... (see picture below)




So I went online to Ravelry and thankfully someone else had also knit this dress (but in a different yarn and size) and I was able to look at their sleeves and get a clue.

So after dropping the girls off at daycare today and making a run to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast for Lee and I, I got busy sewing again and got the sleeves in. Then went out and did some errands with and without Lee in tow. Sewed some more and then brought the almost finished product to my mom's to show the dress to her and have Anna try it on. The good news about having Anna try it on is that it fits. The bad news is that it fits over her regular clothing. She probably won't be wearing it for a while since it's HUGE on her and I still need to figure out how the heck to put the buttons on. After coming home and putting the girls to bed, I got all the Picot rows sewed and done and the dress totally rocks.

I'm awfully proud of myself no matter what. So now I just need to get going on the button band for dress #2 and then get that one sewn together and I'll be DONE with these dresses.

In the meantime I have 2 blankets that I've been working on here and there to get done. There's no real timeline on them so I might actually finally be able to think about trying my hand at making a hat that I have a pattern for or actually using and starting my sock knitting lessons that I bought at the Church Auction last year.

Just some pictures

Anna listening to a CD with Daddy..



Anna's Haircut



Anna's Haircut... she seems to like it.

Please excuse the quality since they were taken with Lee's cell phone and not our Digital Camera