I don’t know how long my site is going to be up today. As soon as it came up, I started getting spammed again.

What’cha got?

I ripped the stocking you saw earlier in the week.

and have reknit it, plus some, redoing the cuff.

It’s way better. I’ll modify it further on the next stocking, but I don’t need to frog this one again. I am still unsure as to what exactly I’m doing with this stocking. I’m having some pretty wild ideas, but they aren’t able to be explained, really. I’d need to show you, and I haven’t mapped it out yet.

When we were at Seaside, Oregon a bit over a month ago, we stepped into an art gallery that carries Greenwich artists. I had seen and admired Cassandra Christensen Barney‘s work in catalogues, but hadn’t seen it in person yet. This little gallery had quite a few of her canvases up on the wall and I really liked them. They’re so serene. Nate asked if I wanted one, but I said no because I knew our huge, expensive bathroom project was looming, and I didn’t just want one, I thought they looked best as a grouping. So we left.

Well, Monday night a very large box was left on the front porch and Nate, who had been popping out of his office a lot more that usual (he’d been watching the tracking number online), excitedly brought it in and started opening it. I had absolutely no idea what was going on.

Apparently, he had sneakily ducked back into the gallery while the girls and I were on the beach and bought them for me. The gallery was to hold them for her upcoming show down there so she could paint on them, and that didn’t happen for whatever reason. But they’re lovely, and I’m still a bit speechless.

Wow. He didn’t say a thing. I didn’t even know he was up to something, although in retrospect, it did take him an awfully long time to get those beach chairs and sand toys out of the car.

To continue with my “Health Group week”, I ate pretty well yesterday, but didn’t manage to do my physical therapy and weights. Today is a cardio day again, and it’s very dark and wet outside, so I’ll try for the treadmill, and to catch up on yesterday’s strengthening exercises.

I haven’t touched the Christmas stocking.

Oh, and one more thing. We’re having bandwidth trouble again. I’m guessing it has to do with the hundreds and hundreds of spam comments I’m getting. We’re looking into switching hosting companies, and possibly blog software as well, so if my site is up/down or otherwise, I’ll be back. I promise.

I need to talk about it to keep me going. But I’ll sneak some knitting in here, too.

Yesterday, after finishing my post, I went for a 50 minute walk. It was fantastic. I drank a strawberry and pecan shake (1 cup milk, 3 huge frozen strawberries, 1/2 cup strawberry yogurt, protein and vitamin powders, and a handful of pecans). I took a fish oil capsule with it. I drank a lot of water throughout the day. I munched on hummus and pita chips. We BBQ’d skinless chicken for dinner.

It felt good.

I’ve started what I think will be Veronica’s stocking. I didn’t really know what to do with the cuff. I had intended on knitting a plain, rolled top but as I thought about it more, it sounded a bit too rustic for what I wanted. Instead, I did 2×2 ribbing for awhile, then cast off 8 stitches. I cast them back on the next round, leaving a “button” hole of sorts,

continued 2×2 ribbing for a few more rounds, then put the cast on edge on another circular and “hemmed” it with my live stitches to make a casing for an i-cord or decorative ribbon to hang the stocking by. It’ll either be brilliant or disastrous. Don’t know yet. Has anyone else done or seen a stocking cuffed like that? If someone else has done it and worked the kinks out, I’d love to know about it.

In looking at the picture, it seems like it would look better to start the cuff out as flat knitting, and then hem the cast on edge to the live stitches at the bottom of the rib to make a vertical hole, as opposed to an awkward looking horizontal one. The more I look at it, the more I think I’m going to frog and start over.

I started it late one night/morning in the wee hours when I couldn’t sleep for an unfortunate combination of reasons. It’s too small to knit on a 16 inch circular, so I tried to figure out magic loop just guessing at what I was supposed to do. I hated it. Probably because I was using a bamboo needle with a rather stiff cord. I think it’d be easier on a steel needle. So I decided to try 2 circulars, also not knowing the technique, but taking my best guess.

I like it. I like it a lot. I’m ecstatically, enthusiastically, brilliantly happy.

The down side? If the stockings are too small to knit on a 16 inch needle, how is Olivia going to knit hers?

We’ve been so ridiculously busy. Saturday night, Nate took us to a concert at a club (I was going to link the club, but they have some not-so-nice sounding bands listed on their homepage, and I don’t want to give the wrong impression) to see the Ditty Bops. It was a lot of fun. The house was packed, and the girls (my girls, who were standing right in front of the stage) were invited up on stage to dance and sing the last part of Sister Kate. Abby was invited up again to talk about a boy at school she thinks is cute as an intro to one of their songs, Obsessive Crush. They had the time of their lives. It’s going to be hard to convince Olivia that you don’t usually get to go on stage and sing with the band at concerts. The crappy thing is….

I didn’t have a camera.

No camera, no video, no imagery to help remember the occasion. It sucks. Cameras aren’t usually allowed in concerts. At least not the concerts I used to go to, so I didn’t even think about it. Of course, my hands were full all night with Clark, and who would have guessed my children would end up being part of the show?

Sucks.

Health Group-

I got nuthin’. BUT, I’m starting today. I swear. I’m going to eat one of my homemade shakes for breakfast and lunch, and I’m going to take Clark on a walk as soon as I’m done typing this. Tomorrow, I’ll do my weights and PT.

I’m tired of being fat. I think I know what I need to do to change it. I just never seem to be able to do it long enough to make much of a difference. But I did lose inchage over the summer. A wee little bit. And I’m going for that again.

Plus, my resting heart rate drops 20 beats per minute when I’m exercising daily. And when I stop, it jumps right back up to 80. Which completely annoys me.

So that’s my post for the day. I have knitting to show, but it’ll be tomorrow. Today, I’m exercising, darnit.

It’s official. We’re starting our knitalong. Here’s the specs-

Commit to knitting a Christmas stocking. Any stocking, any pattern. Make sure I know you’re participating. Check in with me on the blog on Fridays. Fridays are knitalong days. You can either comment to Friday’s post with your update, or you can email me before Friday with pictures, links, progress…. whatever, and I’ll include it in my post. You’ll be listed in the sidebar.

Here’s your button. A big thanks to Nate who is very busy, but managed to pop one out for us.

And our list of participants so far-

Darra

Harriet

Michelle

Brandy

Danielle M

Jenifer, who’s knitting a stocking mitten.

Carrie (oops!)

Me- Laura

and I’ll add my little Olivia.

Did I miss anyone?

I didn’t cast on yesterday, but I did get a lot done in my garage! And I also spent a lot of time on stocking planning. I decided that instead of jumping right in, I’d plan out the color schemes for each stocking to make sure I adequately integrate all 8 colors so they all match, even though they aren’t going to match. Make sense?

This is a sock that I absolutely loved ’til it was threadbare. Now I keep it to serve as inspiration for future socks. It’s store bought, but I like the color divide in the background with the design over the top. I think I’m going to loosely base the kids’ stockings on it’s design.

As of right now, I’m thinking about doing the top a solid color, the bottom half of the leg, and the foot in stripes of the remaining colors set aside for that stocking, and duplicate stitch a design on top. Abigail wants a snowflake, Olivia wants an angel, and V is undecided. I’m hoping she’ll go for Christmas trees. Clark might get a Superman shield, since there is a nice red, yellow, and blue in our color palette. But I’m undecided. His will be knit last.

I’ve practiced duplicate stitch on my swatch, and I think my gauge is tight enough to get away with it. (I tried duplicate stitch on my last stockings, but my gauge was looser, and it was a big, old, ugly mess).

And I still want to do argyle for Nate and I, but I’ve lost my IK issue that has the argyle article in it. (Fall ’02). I’m totally bugged. I can find every other issue and book I’ve pulled for inspiration, but that one’s gone. I haven’t given up, I’m just pouting.

Plus, the more I look at it, the more I want to do ALL of them argyle. It’d be so cool. But I don’t think the girls would necessarily appreciate it.

but slowly. It’s pretty, although the pictures look a bit dingy, and I couldn’t get a good angle due to the tiler’s equipment all over the floor.

Still laying tile. No grout yet. The floor of the shower was laid with rocks a few days ago, and these are our shower cubbies.

He said he’ll be done this week, but I don’t see it happening. I have high hopes for next week.

Then we’ll need to wait another couple weeks for a shower door. But the toilet should at least be back in and working next week, and that will be good.

I was photographing Clark playing on my bed this morning when I caught a grin.

Yes, yes, he’s very cute. But just now as I was trying to type with him on my lap, (because he doesn’t like to be set down), he spit up and then immediately shoved my clean shirt in his mouth. So I was clean and showered for all of 20 minutes or so, and now I smell and look like a mom again.

As for today, I’m torn between spending every free moment I have organizing the garage, (which I started last night. It was glorious), and casting on for a stocking. I’m going to try to do both. Somehow.

We finally had the chandelier installed on Friday.

Remember the “bad” dining room I told you to ignore when I showed you my new table? (It’s only partly bad in that shot. The red had already been applied over the purple). Well, here’s the pretty dining room (although I forgot to take the step ladder and blankets out first).

It was dark purple on top, bright white on the bottom, and trimmed in plastic moldings. Shudder.

Now it’s red, and cedar, and loverly. And temporarily put together until the furniture refinishers come to take my table away for 5 weeks. Totally sucks.

I’ll try to get my stuff together for the knit along by Friday, in that I hope to have a name and a button. But I’ll be ready to see what anyone has to show, for sure.

And Carrie…. Hi!!!! Send me your email address, or email me privately (see sidebar) so I can have your addy.

Any brilliant ideas on what to name our Christmas Stocking-along? I haven’t had any. And Nate hasn’t made a button. But I’m wanting to get this party started, so comment to this entry to tell me if you’re in. Even if you’ve told me already, comment again (please?). It keeps it tidy for me, and I don’t have to worry about stupidly missing someone. I have emails spread out over the last few months from people that want to participate, and even if I go looking, I’ll miss somebody.

Wool of the Andes from Knitpicks seems really nice. Thank you to Jen for suggesting it. It hadn’t even occurred to me. You rock.

Sunday night, while laying in bed, we heard loud crackling sounds on the deck, so we got out the flashlight and went down to the basement to chase off the raccoons.

They’re still stinking cute.

There were four of them. I think they’ve gotten a bit bigger since we saw them last. We shined the big light on them from inside the house, they retreated a little bit and stared at us, waiting for us to go away, which we didn’t because they were around my pond. Three of them laid their little chins on a flat rock, side by side and I couldn’t believe how cute they were, considering they’re vermin.

Happily, I still have all of my fish, so I don’t hate them yet.

As for the swatch, I don’t like the ribbing or the garter stitch, so I’ll probably do a rolled, stockinette top. I still need to measure the swatch and work out a basic pattern. I’m thinking that most of them will be stripes within our color palette, with a duplicate stitch design added after it’s done. That way, Olivia can help with the knitting. But I still like the idea of Nate’s and mine being argyle.

Clark didn’t sleep too well last night, and at 4:30 this morning, he was done sleeping and kicked and clawed me until I lost all hope of going back to sleep myself. So I’m going to do some laundry now.

I’m cheating and post dating this entry for Saturday. As usual, things have been very busy. We went for a great walk on Sunday, and I did my physical therapy and weights last Saturday. I’m still trying to get back into a schedule. Nate wants to work out together at 1 o’clock every afternoon, after V goes to school and Clark goes down for a nap. Sounds good. We’ll see if it sticks. I have to admit to being a bit skeptical, as Nate is very busy with work right now.

I have to keep telling myself that I exercised daily for 5 consecutive weeks this summer, and the two weeks I added great eating were fantastic. I did it. I can do it again.

Part of what’s been throwing me off that my house was turned upside down while we were away for my sister’s wedding, while the floors were being refinished. And there are still contractors in my house nearly every day. That just messes stuff up. But we made good progress on the house today (Monday), and I’ve been working on it daily all last week during Clark’s naps. I’m slowly getting there.