At Minnie's House.....

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This is a good tool for anyone that knits socks. It's a generic table for plain vanilla socks in any weight or size.

When each wave comes a rollin' in....

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We're home! We had a great trip. It was HOT! Which is really weird cuz it was at least ten degrees cooler (as the thermometer reads) in Disneyland than it was here in the desert but the first three days really wiped us out. The last day was much cooler or we'd finally adapted.

Oldest Granddaughter was tall enough to go on all the rides. We spent a lot of time on the roller coasters as well as the smaller rides for Youngest Granddaughter. Thursday and Friday were really great....hardly anyone there in the park at all. We rarely had to stand in line for more than ten minutes. Saturday and Sunday were a bit more crowded, which is to be expected.

Youngest Daughter and I overcame our hesitations and rode the really big roller coaster, California Screamin'. It was great! Youngest Daughter didn't share my enthusiasm, but I enjoyed it every one of the three or four times I went on it!

I got very little knitting done. We didn't have to stand in lines, so that cut that KIP time out and it was just too hot! And of course we rolled into bed as soon as we got back to the motel and were out the door shortly after getting up in the mornings. I did knit a bit in the car over and back.... Gusset decreases are finished.

"Socks are Dobby's favorite clothes, Sir! "

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Aren't they cute? They are really easy to make.
Details:
Pattern: Houdini Socks by Cat Bordhi
Yarn: Left over sock yarns
Needles: US2, 32 inch circular
Size: Child's Medium
CO: Aug 16 BO: Aug 18
Ravelry
And I immediately CO another pair. These will refrain from having any pink in them so I can send them on to my 2nd GS in Hawaii whose father has very conservative taste. I'm hoping because they'll be Dobby Socks he'll let him wear them, even though 95% of the weird colors will be in the shoe! This is left over Heart & Sole, Tequila Sunrise.

Oldest Granddaughter's first day of 2nd grade went very well. She likes her teacher, has only one new friend in her classroom, and lost only one from last year. So she knows everyone and can slide comfortably into the academics. She has early dismissal today and tomorrow and then starts full days on Thursday.

Youngest Granddaughter and I had a nice morning, making Oatmeal Raisin cookies. After we picked up her sister, we went to Mickey D's to celebrate the first day of school, and then to the library to stock up on at home reading material.

Two more weeks till we leave for Disneyland. "Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?" I found three CDs on line last night, purchasing two of them, that the grands used to listen to when they were younger and riding in the car with me. Mickey's Silly Songs and Mickey's Children's Favorites. Hope they get here before we leave so we can thoroughly saturate ourselves with them on our 7-8 hour drive! We also have a portable DVD player for the kidlings to occupy some of the time, will have stacks of books and coloring materials, too. I'm scouting for an audio book appropriate for the entire family. We've all listened to HP books many times, so I'd like to find something new....

If you'd like to knit a scarf and need someone to give it to that will really appreciate it....

Would you like ketchup with your Blogger?

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I'm having a really annoying issue with Blogger. Not my Blog, but when trying to comment in other blogs that have the pop up window to comment in. The last blog I just tried to comment on, had a window that was an inch wide and four or five inches long. And now nav bar at the bottom to slide the comment window into the view. I was inventive, typed my comment on WordPad and pasted it into the comment window. Then I couldn't get to the word verification or the "Post this comment" link. :::heavy sigh::::

Now for the ketchup... I frogged the sock. Pattern got screwed up and well, it's frogged. Not all the way, just down to the st st. Now it's all st st. Not much to see, so pics will wait.

I've been working on the Feather & Fan Comfort Shawl and have just about replaced everything I frogged on it. Pics when I get the energy to put it on waste yarn to stretch it all the way out.

I really haven't had a bunch of knitting time recently. On Friday our Income Tax return came in, so we went shopping for a Wii. Not that we found one, but we spent a lot of time and energy looking for one. Yesterday I took the kids shopping to return the most recent MP3 player (see saga below) and pick up some things for the trip...new netherwear, shirts, toothpaste, etc.


To continue the Wii story. As I said, we didn't find one anywhere and no one knew when they'd get them in yadda yadda yadda. I found some on line at anywhere from $120 over suggested retail to twice retail. We decided to wait. Youngest Daughter called me from work where she has access to the Sunday Paper. Target had Wiis. So I drug Youngest Granddaughter out of bed with the promise of donuts and we were second in line when the store opened. We got a Wii. Then we got donuts and came home. All before 9:00 AM.

The never ending MP3 saga. I returned the second Zen Stone Plus and bought a Memorex for twice the amount, but one can watch movies on it. It was so complicated I couldn't figure out how it worked, especially since the soft ware didn't work. Returned it and got yet another (number three) Zen Stone Plus. (Einstein's definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.") It works just as well as the others, five hours worth of batter that looses about 15% of the charge over night when not in use. But...I know how to use it. And I know where all the charging stations are in the DFW airport. So, I can recharge it during my layover.

Oh, and one other major weekend purchase! Guess where we are going in September?

Back to Normal....

Well, it's Thursday and I finally feel like I've recovered from my vacation. Monday was eaten up by five loads of laundry and grocery shopping. Tuesday was house cleaning and vegetative state. Wednesday was a doctor appointment. So, today's Thursday and I hope nothing more exciting that a dropped stitch or two.

This is really just about the most recent pic of my current Mickey Mouse sock. I have turned the heel and am doing heel decreases, but.... These are on hold now because of holiday knitting that must be done.


This is my current progress on the Felted Mary Janes. I frogged the one I had been working on and with the new correct size 10 needles I bought prior to vacation, CO back on and have gotten about 2/3 of the way done on the first one. These are top priority today.

And I CO a new project based on this Hoodie Scarf pattern. I did about two inches of the pattern and determined it wasn't wide enough for the person I'm giving it to. So frogged that and decided, due to time contraints to make it much simpler. This is just a K3, P1 row pattern with an I-Cord edging. It's made from a strand of acrylic and a strand of recyled sweater.

Row 1, 2, and 3: Knit to last three sts. Bring yarn forward and slip, as if to purl, the last three sts.
Row 4: Purl to last three sts, slip as if to purl, the last three sts.
Repeat 4 rows.


If you are interested in viewing them, our vacation pics are here or here. Same pics, just uploaded to two different locations.

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack....

We made it back, safe and sound. We had a great vacation!

Disneyland was pretty much empty for the first three days. We walked on just about every ride (except Finding Nemo). The longest wait we had, I think, was 30 minutes on one ride. Everything else, was 5 to 15 minutes. We never used out Fast Pass for anything until Saturday. It got crowded then, but still wasn't bad.

Friday, we were first in line at one of the opening gates! That's a first for us. As was all the rides "we" broke. We had to walk off of Splash Mountain and Pinocchio. We had great seats for all the shows we went to...it was just a great trip!

Sunday morning we had a great breakfast with Minnie and her friends. It was Youngest Daughter's 26th birthday, so we splurged and had a nice sit down breakfast with lots of the characters.

I'll have more pictures when I finish getting them off the camera.

I managed to get one sock done to the heel decreases. We never had to stand in line, so my knitting time was really compromised. Most of my knitting time was in the ride over and back. We were off to the park first thing in the morning and came home late at night. And too tired to do much knitting at the hotel.

On the road....

I finished up the Peek-A-Boo mittens yesterday. Now they need to be washed and blocked, but that'll probably wait until we get back from

DISNEYLAND!

We should be leaving around 11:00 or so. Youngest Daughter has an acupuncture appointment this morning at 9:45 and then we have to drop her car off with the house sitter.

I didn't get a whole lot of knitting done yesterday besides the mitten thumbs. Just too tired to concentrate last night. So I tried reading. And that put me right to sleep. Oh well....

That's it, kiddies. See you when I get back!

Need Thumbs

Have gotten both mittens done except the thumbs. With any luck at all, I can finish those up to day in the midst of washing clothes and packing and generally going into a panic about getting everything done before we leave TOMORROW morning!

I worked some on my newest Mickey Mouse socks...It's really fun to work this stitch pattern.

It's really easy....Round 1: K; Round 2: *YO K2, pass YO over two sts*; Rounds 3 & 4: K. The second round really leaves a neat pattern and breaks up the color repeats nicely.

Didn't do much else yesterday except ride herd on all the kids. The grands really did well over the weekend...I expected by Sunday afternoon they might have gotten tired of each other, but they hung out pretty well.

Birthday Knitting

I finished up the first of the two work socks for 2nd Son's Christmas Eve birthday present. They fit Youngest Son, so I'm assuming they'll fit the other one, too.

F worked for a couple hours on my car yesterday. We replaced all the light bulbs and checked the fuses...and still no running lights in the back. Off to U-Haul today to buy towing lights. These will have to be wired directly to the battery, but they will fix the night time driving problem. Then to an auto electronics place to see if we can get a wireless lock for the door. F did get the driver's window up all the way, and took out the fuse for that one window so that it can't accidentally be lowered and subsequently not raised again. The linkage from the lock is what's causing the problem. F's confident he can fix it (how hard can it be?). But that's better left until we get back from Disneyland.

The exciting news is that Youngest Daughter got next Tuesday off completely so we're going to drive over to Disneyland a day early. Generally we leave some time in the middle of the night so the kids are asleep for most of the trip. What's not so good about that these days is I can't drive at night any more and Youngest Daughter doesn't like to. But it cuts off one night in a hotel and when money is generally an issue.... But with the light issues with the car, and everything else, we thought daytime driving might be a better bet. So, we're leaving Tuesday morning at a decent hour in stead of at 0-dark-thirty Wednesday as we'd originally planned. We'll take our time and let the kids out to run around a bit, etc. We're excited!

Youngest Son has agreed to wear Jackyll & Hide for a bit on Halloween at Disneyland. Yeah!