My feet

We can all post photos of our new shoes on the web - its a sort of mini meme.

Edited to add that a meme is a sort of 20 questions that bloggers answer to reveal something about themselves - and then typically 'tag' one or more other bloggers to answer too. Since the only other blogger I know is Christina, and she has already posted pictures of her feet (see above) I have no one else to 'tag' unless Gill wants to start a shoe blog. Come to think of it thats probably a good idea...Gill?

Gaithersburg

I just returned from my week in the East and was glad to get home on so many levels. The class was good and enjoyable, and it was nice to catch up with (and meet) my colleagues. However, the weather was just horrid - hot and humid, and of course, I missed the boys.

Nigel seems to have coped admirably with my absence and the boys did not seem to have missed me (which is a good thing - right?).

There was some knitting content in my week - during the class I completed a large piece of uncomplicated, but secret, knitting. In the evenings I got this far with my sock.

I also spent an evening with the NoMoCo (North Montgomery County) Stitch and Bitch which was entertaining.

We were ready...

Update from Gaithersburg later...

Captain Hook

"Look Mummy, I'm Captain Hook"

Orange sweater finished

I finished my Rowan sweater. Im pretty pleased with it - although of course I put it on for the photo and immediately took it off and put it away for autumn. The only comment I have is that the sleeves were too short in the pattern. According to the picture this is not a 3/4 sleeve sweater, but the measurements indicated that they would only reach to below my elbows so I increased the sleeve length. I do think this is a common problem with Rowans styling of their photos - they are all very artistic, but dont actually reflect what the item will look like.

Camping

We went camping in Uvas Canyon last weekend. The park is lovely, if small, with delightful waterfalls and streams to play in. The campsite is also small - there were only about 6 other tents when we were there plus a cub scout camp at the group site. There are no showers which limits how long I would want to stay there - but otherwise its gone to the top of my favourite sites. No raccoons or skunks though (some might consider that a benefit).
Once nice thing was that, because the site was so quiet, we let the boys go off together which is really a first for them. They played some great games with sticks ( surprise).

Creativity (not mine)

Meredith made a vinegar and baking soda volcano with the boys.
They made the volcano out of papier mache, and then painted it. I think it looks terrific.
The boys were absolutely thrilled!

Shrinky dinks

...or my adventures in felting. In truth, I've never actually made shrinky-dinks, but Meredith brought them over for the boys yesterday so I will get to see them 'in action' from close up. (For the uninitiated Shrinky Dinks appear to be some sort of plastic/paper thing that you colour in, then bake, which shrinks the item - the boys will love it!).

Anyway Ive been shrinking wool - I know Ive done this unintentionally in the past, but now its fashionable to do this on purpose.

This is my second PC bag having made one for myself previously. This one is for Christina and was part of my pre-UK secret knitting.

Here is the bag before felting along with a sunglasses case I knitted with leftovers. Now, you see I included a ruler in my 'before' shot to show the effect of felting.
however, I didnt take an 'after' photo, so this is Christina's photo not including a ruler. Anyway, it shrank about 25-30% after felting.

you cant really see the details, but this did not shrink as evenly as my bag although they were both made in the same wool (Knitpicks Wool of the Andes). I think the shrinkage was less even because I made this bag bigger than mine. The pattern was from IK - I cant remember which issue, but they seem to have a felted bag in every issue anyway.

Its definitely summer now

This morning we went out to the Creek trail with the boys. This is the first time Adam has been out on the trail with us, on his own bike, and Fin's first time on the trail-a-bike. We did a tour of the lake then headed back for smoothies.
We spent the afternoon in the pool - literally all afternoon. We heated it (for a change) and the boys were in the water from 3-6pm. Even I got in for a swim!I think they were asleep before their heads hit their pillows...I imagine I might be the same way!

Progress and purchase

Progress has been made on the orange sweater. Its Rowan Chamomile from the Summer Tweed book. The summer tweed is a blend of 70% silk 30% cotton and was a gift from Christina for my birthday. It knits up thicker than I expected - but that means its quick. It's for me, but its probably going to be too heavy to wear for a few months as its now hot here.

This is the new purchase. Its Koigu premium merino and is intended for socks. The photo does not really do justice to the colour as its much more muted shade than shown here. Im planning to try the embossed leaves socks from IK Winter 2005 but will see if my knitting skills are up to it.

Finlay came with me to Knitting Arts as he was on a mission of his own. He spent all morning talking about needing to get his spaceship from Sunnyvale where it was apparently parked in a car park. I persuaded him that Saratoga was a good substitute and he happily came with me on the promise that we would go and search the car park.

We didnt find the spaceship (apparently orange and green, but containing a chemical that made it look like a car) but we did find the patch of oil from where it had blasted off, and heard it (although that may have been a Harley in the street). However, F was happy with this resolution and went home pleased with his discovery.

I was amazed that he maintained this fantasy basically all day without any input from anyone else except substituting Saratoga for Sunnyvale. We were getting afraid that we were going to have to actually go to Sunnyvale to stop him worrying about the spaceship!

A challenge accepted.

Some of you might remember, in the dim and distant past when I started this blog, that I was waiting for Christina to develop her "perfect blog".
She has (finally) developed said blog and here it is...
http://www.work4idlehands.co.uk/weblog/index.html

Youth

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed in the previous post, that Adam appears to be stroking the rabbit with a sock-puppet. In fact the sock was to protect a nasty scald which he got when pulling a hot pot of coffee off the kitchen counter.

I am delighted to report that this is almost completely healed. Its amazing how quickly his young skin has grown again.

The worst burn was on his thumb, and even this is almost healed too.
Although his hand was undoubtedly very painful, Adam did enjoy the his moment in the spotlight. At school on Tuesday he showed everyone in the class and told them what could happen when you mess about in the kitchen!

Graduation

Yesteday was Adam's preschool graduation, and also his last day at preshool. They make a big deal about this sort of thing and there was a show...here are Adam's class singing "Its a Small World". In fact, except for 2 girls singing loudly we would not have know what they were singing as none of the boys appeared to know anything more than the chorus.
There was a short ceremony where the teacher (Jessie) handed out certificates and read a short item about each child. One thing they had been asked was what they wanted to be when they grew up, this demonstrated a clear gender divide. The girls wanted to be Dentist, Vet, Engineer, and mommy (although there was one aspiring RockStar!). They boys? Well, construction worker, police officer, scuba diver and snowboarder (our boy).
After the ceremony there was a party for the children and parents, assorted grandparents etc with pizza and cake, and goody bags for the graduates.

We took both boys out for a celebratory dinner that evening. We tried out what looks a fairly uninteresting restaurant next to Wholefoods, to discover that it was actually rather fancy. The boys stepped up to the occasion.

Updated knitting content

Well - I did all that secret knitting - but I didnt take any photographs.

While I was in the UK I mostly knitted dishcloths (!)

Ferretworld world tour (well England)

Here is Ned - he arrived on May 14th. He is just as cute in the flesh...and we were glad to be there for first cuddles.

While we were in the UK we did lots of exciting things:

A boat trip around Portsmouth Harbour with M&F

A visit to Birdworld with Nancy,

Holycombe Steam Fair with Thomas and Elliot,

Finkley Down Farm with Nancy, Flossie, and Ned,

As well as numerous other adventures, including the Dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History museum with Nanny, and some shopping.

We saw the best of an English spring:

...and a typical english spring...

We made some new friendships:

and we made the acquaintance of some very new friends;

A new game at our house

"Is your baby going to be early or late?"

First swim of the season

We had our first swim of the summer on Sunday. It reached 93 degrees by the back door. The boys were a little cautious to begin with - they have not swum since Centerparcs - but soon got back into the swing.

I dont need any words for this photo!

River

This is River from Rowan somthing. Its knitted in Rowan Kidsilk Haze - or actually the variant of KSH that is speckled. Currently unblocked - and I think I may leave it like this as a better disguise for the number of mistakes in it. Although the KSH is lovely to knit, I didn't enjoy knitting this much - its impossible to frog when you make a mistake and I had to watch every single stitch. However, Im pleased with the result. I'm hoping it will get some wear as a light cover-up for our summer evenings.

We were all busy this weekend

We finally got some sunny weather today - so we got to work on our garden improvement project. I painted the concrete wall at the edge of the steps and behind the spa with orange paint. It really hides a lot of the imperfections of the wall and looks a lot better. Here is Nigel enjoying our favourite sitting spot - you will notice that we are locked behind the pool fence - it gets us some peace!
We also moved the decrepit wendy house and planted an Acer in a pot. I dug some of my nicer pots out and we planted them up too on the steps. The wall pots are from Farnham Pottery - remember those Gill? They actually have plastic ivy in them - I think that wall gets too much sun to keep stuff moist in terracotta pots.
In crafty news - Adam and Finlay wanted scarves for Teddy and Bunny - so I taught them finger knitting. Adam actually did a lot of his own - same cant be said for F. I remember at Thornton Hough that my friends and I had huge balls of finger knitting - we never made anything with it but would compare the length we had achieved. I wonder what happened to all those hundreds of yards of it?

In my knitting im on the final repeat of River - I should photograph it now when it looks like a mess of cobweb because once its blocked the many errors will be more apparent!

Im just going to the office dear

We had a productive day today...see our new home office!
We thought it was just like old times - except that we now have 2 children who were not around when we were doing all the work on the house. Nigel laid a plywood subfloor, then I laid a vinyl tile floor. We were both glowing with the satisfaction of a job well done - although in our case this is more a question of chance than anything. Once we moved the furniture in it was quite homely. In fact its a good sight nicer than my office at Cottle Road - at least it has a window.

So unless it turns out to be unbearably hot or cold (and we have a radiator and a fan to cater for each possibility) then Nigel and I might be fighting over our new workspace.

If its too hot or too cold we'll be fighting inside! We eased our aching legs in the spa with the boys.