Mom's Holiday Visit

My mom came on Sunday, and we had a great visit together. On Sunday night we got dinner from Little Italy and watched football while I did some grading.

On Monday I did some grading in the morning and then we went all over the city -- Washington Square, the Curtis Building, the Visitor Center (I got her a National Parks passport, and we needed to get it stamped), the Money in Motion exhibit (so she could get some state quarters from the machine), Franklin Square, Reading Terminal (we shared jambalaya from the Cajun place), Macy's (the Dickens Village was a highlight. We also saw the light show.) We went to the Christmas Village and then to the Comcast building, where they give you 3-D glasses to see their Christmas special on the big screen. We went to Anthropologie and to Rittenhouse, then to dinner with Luke at Rangoon and then came home. We all watched Monday Night Football while I graded and Mom started knitting an elaborate cabled tree skirt from Handknit Holidays.

Dickens Village:


City Hall/Macy's:



Ceiling at Anthropologie:



On Tuesday morning I got up and did some grading while Mom ripped out the tree skirt (she didn't like the way it was coming out with the yarn I had). She started a pair of cabled socks for me. Then we got in the car and went over to the Drexel area, where we went to the bookstore and got a parking permit. On we went to the Brandywine Museum (where they had great kale/sausage/something else soup for lunch, and where we saw the Christmas trains exhibit, the doll collection, the Critters, and an Alice in Wonderland exhibit). (I love Andrew Wyeth's paintings so much. They create an instant calm for me while also inspiring me to write.) Then we went to Longwood Gardens. I had been there in the daytime at Christmas, but not at night. We drank hot chocolate in the cafe while we waited for it to get dark. At the last minute, we decided to go to the skating exhibition -- a junior pairs team and a 13-year-old male skater. It was only $5, and was fun to see skating outside. The lights at Longwood are amazing -- totally worth the admission. At night we came back and had dinner here (Luke made stir fry) and I graded while Mom knit. We had a system with dark chocolate M&Ms. Each M&M represented a paper I needed to grade, and I would move them from one cup to another as I went through them. At the end of each evening, we ate the M&Ms.

Brandywine Christmas Critters:



Wreath at Longwood:



Longwood at Night:





My GRID issue at Whole Foods:




Yesterday morning I still had a lot to do, so I was in marathon grading mode. (Mom had originally planned to go home on Wednesday, but I talked her into staying until Thursday.) I managed to get the final grades in a couple of hours early, and then we got in the car and went to Cape May. I love the shore in the winter, and I didn't get to go for my birthday this year. It wasn't as busy as I expected (in fact, it was kind of a ghost town). But we had fun poking around in the shops, and then we walked on the beach and drove out to Sunset Beach (just missed the sun going down, but saw some of the aftermath) and to the lighthouse. For dinner we had Freshchetta at home and watched Prep & Landing, which was on TV again. Luke loved it, like I knew he would. Mom liked it too, but was jarred by the commercial interruptions. Then we watched the "Crazy Christmas Lights" special on demand and knit. I'm making a set of six Christmas ball decorations with Noro yarn for my friend Bonnie. Mom worked on my socks.

I was sad to see Mom go, but at least this time I'll see her again soon!

Monkey 2

Getting tired of knitting updates yet? If so, skip this. I knitted a new monkey this weekend:

I had a hard time picking a new project, but finally decided to try a tiny monkey with the same general pattern as the big one. The big one was a lot easier to make, as it turns out. I used size 3 needles for the head, body, legs, arms, and tail and then switched to size 1 for the face, ears and feet. It was a tough time, even with the tiny needles. Like with the big monkey, every stitch made a difference because of the scale. Then I used black seed beads for the eyes, and I had to use a ridiculously thin-eyed bead needle to sew them on. Oh, and I also made one of his feet upside-down, but whatever. I'm trying to let that go.







So far, the monkeys seem to be getting along well:

Monkey

I finally finished the monkey tonight. I used Burly Spun in Mountain Majesty? and Oatmeal, and some Lamb's Pride Bulky in brown for the face. Lucas helped a lot with suggestions about monkey anatomy, including the great idea to double the ears like that. Here are some pictures:

SnowAnimals

Finished rabbit on May 1st, but realized yesterday I forgot to add a tail:





Finished snow "wolf" yesterday. He doesn't look exactly like a wolf, though -- maybe he's some kind of dog mix.

I would like to set these things up with good lighting and take better pictures of them -- some of the knitting blogs have great pictures. Nevertheless, here are PhotoBooth pictures of the wolf:







He finally came together when I put his nose on:



I'm not sure what my next move will be. I used up every last bit of that great yarn on the wolf, but I have bulkier snow-colored yarn.

Older Knitting

April 5
I made a bunch of Easter eggs, and then I realized that if I didn't finish an egg but made a couple more sections instead, maybe I could make a bug. Originally I thought it would be a Cootie, like in the game. So I made this:







Now, I'm not quite sure it's done. Lucas thinks the back legs are a little anatomically strange and should be moved to the middle section. I'm inclined to agree, but then how would the bug drag its giant end around? He thinks that having all the legs together would make it more closely resemble the structure of a real ant, which is what he thinks it most likely is. However, I think his view of knitted bugs might be overly scientific.

The other question is whether to make wings. This would make the bug not an ant, but something else. I mean, there are flying ants, but I don't think I want it to be a flying ant, because those are kind of gross. But wings are cool, and it would probably be fun to knit some wings if I could find the right yarn.

What do you think about the leg placement and wings/no wings?

P.S. This is going off the deep end a bit, but here's another example of the egg pattern's usefulness. I made a hat for my egg timer:




April 17
Bug #2 -- Lucas made the legs. I'm not sure this one is done. He probably needs a face, but I'm not sure how I'm going to do that. The face makes a huge difference in the creature's character.





I have another bug body made, but I'm not sure what I want to do about the legs for that one.

Today I finished a bird. Shannon sent the link to this pattern:
http://berroco.com/exclusives/bluebird/bluebird.html

I think that bird is so cute, so I tried it, but the pattern confused me. So last night while we were watching the new Bond movie I just tried to freeform it, purposely not looking at the picture again. I used the good old Easter Egg pattern and then modified as I went along. I think the beak on mine is too long, making him look like a duck. I also put the tail on sideways. But I like him anyway:

Knitting Update

I really don't like being in between knitting projects. I mean, it's nice to finish things, but then there's a slow period when I try to decide what to do next. I still have a bug body without legs and an elephant without a head, so I guess I wasn't exactly in between projects this time -- I just wasn't inspired to work on anything. But the Red Sox were playing the Yankees last night, and I wanted something to knit during the game. I mentioned this to Lucas and he suggested an abominable snowman. (He had been playing baseball all day in the ridiculous heat.) It turned out to be a great project, although like all Yeti, he was difficult to photograph.