I will admit right here and now that I am not a football fan.  Sandy is an uber football fan, though, and the Super Bowl coming to Indianapolis this year is starting 2012 out on fantastic footing for her.  For starters, she is one of the thousands of volunteers accepted to work the Super Bowl activities in the days leading up to the game.  She has her official Super Bowl volunteer T-shirt, jacket, hat, scarf, pin and tickets to the NFL Experience.  But she just felt there was something missing from all of this, so she took steps to remedy the problem.

A trip to the bead store combined with my jewelry making tools and Sandy could make what she wanted.

These earrings and bracelet will be proudly worn each of the days she will be working and she will have something special to remember this opportunity to be a part of the action.  In fact, if anyone would like a set just like it, she is selling them for $40 for the bracelent and $50 for the complete set as seen above.  Just email me at basicallybenita@yahoo.com and I’ll forward it on to her.

Now, if any of you have a spare ticket to the game itself and would like to take Sandy with you, then her Super Bowl experience would be complete.  And she’d throw in a bracelet and earrings as a thank you gift.

…and I am a container addict.  Unfortunately, I am surrounded by container addicts as well.  Few things catches the attention of us than a container in which one can hold things.

Over 20 years ago, my mother-in-law gave me a tan and brown Rolykit.  I have used this Rolykit for many things, although, in the past few years, it has held my jewelry making supplies and tools.

What is a Rolykit?  Well, it is a roll-up box.  Unfortunately, finding them here in the US is not easy. 

Sandy’s and my newest acquisitions came from ebay.  Mine is the green one with purple straps, and Sandy’s is the big blue one with black straps.

And here is what they look like unrolled.  Mine is used and someone has put in the dividers, but Sandy’s is new and the dividers are still in their plastic bags.  The tan and brown one I have at home is going to go to Scott once I transfer my jewelry stuff over to the green one this weekend.  Scott is going to use it as his painting “away” kit for his acrylic paints.

These are the handiest containers in the world!  Once you put in them what you want, you just roll them up and take them with you, or store them on a shelf until needed again.  I may have to go out and see what else is available – or is that addiction talk?

Yesterday, it was my intention to warp the Harrisville with the waffle-weave towel warp that I had ready and waiting.  After doing some quick calculations on how many heddles I needed per harness, it became apparent that I did not have enough heddles on this loom. 

I swear that each of the looms I have at home right now have heddles of different lengths.  I have loaned out looms, but they aren’t going to help me in this instance, even though I believe they have extra heddles on them I could have used.  So, before I can continue this project, I need to order more heddles, which I will do when I get home tonight.

I did have enough heddles on hand to get harnesses 3 and 4 ready, so I did that.  The one thing I like about the Harrisville loom and its floating harness system is the ease of removing the harnesses to work on them.  Just unhook the cables on each side that goes through the pulley system and you have a free harness.  (BTW, do you think it is about time I passed my 3 sizes too big, dye-covered sweatshirt on to someone else who dyes?  I hadn’t realized how too big this thing has gotten until I put it on yesterday.)

So close to being about to start the threading.  At 600 ends, it’s going to take a few hours getting this warp on and ready to weave.  Maybe next weekend.

Since I was thwarted from working on the loom (don’t you just love that word “thwarted’?), I settled down with the new sweater I am knitting.  I have 21 rows of 202 stitches of 1K-1P ribbing to do before I increase the stitches up to 226 and start the main part of the body.  Since ribbing is almost as boring to knit as stockingnet, I thought that if I could get past that part and onto the pattern part, it would be just as well.

It was very cold over the weekend, and we keep the house set at 60 degrees during the day to help keep the propane budget down to something livable, so Scott and I tend to wear layers and make judicious use of blankets and shawls while we work.  So, Scott thought it would be funny to take pictures of me all wrapped up and knitting on a wool sweater that I need to keep me warm.  As you can see, I didn’t even have the skein wound into a ball.  Sometimes you just want to start knitting and setting up the swift and ball winder is just too much trouble.

As of when I went to bed last night, I have only 4 more rows of ribbing to knit, so I almost made it.  Unfortunately, the kittens won’t let me knit, and I felt a bit guilty them having to be in time out while I knitted in the studio, so I didn’t get it finished.

Scott’s mom bought a year’s subscription to the streaming version of Netflix for us and I discovered Rosemary & Thyme yesterday afternoon.  That is a great show, and just reminds me all over again why I love the British people.  Seeing the country side and listening to them talk and watching them as they interacted with one another reminded me so much of our trip to England nearly 20 years ago.  And, unlike American television, British television doesn’t feel the need to present only beautiful young things in their shows.  It is so good to watch something with people who look normal.

This is going to be a busy week at work.  Tax season has begun.

Mom is having a needle biopsy done Monday morning at 8:30 (Texas time).  At that time they should find out the type of cancer she has as well as the stage it is at.

Currently, she is having some trouble breathing and the CT scans showed that the tumor on her aorta is pushing her wind pipe over 2″ and is collapsing it slightly.  So the sooner they can get her started on the chemo and get that tumor shrinking the better.

The one bit of upsetting news for her is that the doctors have told her that she will never get her voice back due to the tumor on her larnyx.  Currently her voice is forced and higher pitched and weaker than what she has always sounded like.  I think this was harder for her to take than the cancer news.

Again, I want to thank everyone for your prayers and good thoughts on Mom’s behalf.  If you can keep Daddy in your prayers, too, I know he’d appreciate it.  This is the second time he and Mom have gone through this with her, and Daddy is in remission from Leukemia, so they’ve dealt with this type of thing with him, too.  

I think I told you that Mom is 68.  I was wrong, she is only 66 and it is Daddy who is 68.  Their names are Clinton and Helen.

Yesterday, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee posted about her new mittens pattern, and I bought it.  Finally, a mitten pattern for me that I like and can’t wait to make. 

I have lots of left over worsted weight yarn from various other projects that can be used up on the cuffs of these.  Of course, they will be in line after the socks, but during the sweater.  The socks/mittens will be my evening knitting and the sweater my lunch-time knitting unless I can’t stand it and switch them around.  I am a woman, I am allowed to change my mind.

Last night , I visited my Sweater Wizard program to come up with the pattern for the sweater.  Definitely going with a V-neck, but the sleeves still were giving me issues.  Set-in?  Drop?  I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go.  And should I continue the pattern on the sleeves or make them plain stockingnet?  In a way, I wish I had some of this yarn in the plain turquoise color for the sleeves, ribbing and facing on the neck, but I don’t.  I calculated the sleeves both ways but drop sleeves requires more yarn than I had, so I ended up going with the set-in sleeves.  This time, though, I opted to knit the sleeves from the top down, picking up the arm hole stitches and using short rows to shape the sleeve cap.  I have never done this before, so it will be an interesting challenge.

For those of you not familiar with Sweater Wizard, here is how the (old) version I have works.  I put in the guage and the needle size I used for the swatch, tell it the type of sweater (or vest or cardigan, or…), is it for a man, woman, child, doll or bear, top-down or bottom up, what type of neck, sleeve, finish, etc., and the size in inches.  And it does the calculations for the base pattern.  You have to add in the “pattern stitches” yourself.  Remember the sweater vests I did with my naturally dyed yarn?  After it spit out the base pattern, I had to do the hand work for the placement of the center cables.

With the current sweater pattern, I will still have to calculate the pattern so that I have the chevron stitch centered just exactly as I want it.  That will cause a little messing with the stitch count to make it be divisible by 13, but I can add those extra I need as plain knits at the side “seams”.  Also, I will have to decide on the exact way I want the V-neck to look.  I can do it exactly as written, or do some messing with it for a slightly different look.  I am pretty sure I know what I want, so we’ll see when I get there.

So, Sweater Wizard doesn’t do all the work for you, but it sure gives you a leg up on the hard part.

Like I said last week, I love the yarn I was trying to knit the Bordello sock pattern from, so I wanted to use it.  I cast on for a new pair of socks and am doing a simple K2P2 ribbing all the way down.  These socks will fit me for sure.

So, this young lady has been saved from the bordello and will now live life as a respectable and useful member of society.  She need not be ashamed of her past as she has risen above it.  The future is all that counts now.

But that chevron stitch in the bordello sock pattern is not going to be wasted.

I knitted a couple of inches using just a plain stockingnet stitch, then a couple of inches in the chevron stitch to see how my draw-in there would be.  A lot more than I had suspected.  Now to figure out how to count stitches that are slanting.

And take a close look at this area.  Doesn’t that look perfect for the center front on a V-neck sweater?  I am going to work it so that I can use this that way and when the V-neck starts, the slant of the stitches will work nicely.

I have had 10 skeins of this yarn (1650 yards) for a couple of years now just waiting for the right idea for a sweater to come along.  I think it finally has.  I knit this with a size 6 needle, which gives the swatch a nice feel, so this is the size of needles I am going to use on the sweater.  Most likely, I’ll knit it in the round.

Use to, I would get a couple of books, devour them, then go back to reading old books until I had the spare money to buy a couple more books.

With the Kindle and the wealth of free books out there, I just have to turn on the wireless, go out to the Kindle store and search for more free (or cheap) books.  Oh the horrors.  Instead of reading one book at a time, I can read multiple books, each depending on my mood.  So, currently on the read list, thanks to Kindle, are:

Emma by Jane Austen (I know I’ve read this before but it has been years!)- Free

Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find your Path Back to Health by William David, MD

Dangerous Ground, or The Rival Detectives byLawrence L. Lynch – Free

The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne – Free

Spinning Wheel Stories by Louisa May Alcott – Free

The Norwegian Fairy Book by Clara Stroebe – Free

Do you see my trouble?  I am being overwhelmed by good reading material.  This has never happened to me before and I am dangerously close to wanting to spend all my time reading.  I’ve not gotten a new e-reader – I’ve created an information monster!!!

It’s a good thing it can read to me as my hands are busy doing something else.  And, dear MIL of mine – I once again thank you for giving this wonderful tool to me.

Right now my mom is going through a very rough time of things.  She had cancer several years ago, and she has cancer again.  She lives in Texas and I live in Indiana.  We do talk on the phone, but visits are few and far between.  Dad is a bluegrass banjo (5-string) player and right now he’s playing 5 shows a week, so that keeps them tied to their area.

Since there is so much distance between us, I thought I’d send my mom a hug from me.  Mom loves turquoise and southwestern jewelry, so I thought I’d design and make a bracelet for her to wear that was reminscent of the style she loves.

This way, when she wears it, she will know that I am sending her all of the best thoughts and prayers and to think of me hugging her.  From the time I made it, until I got it out in the mail, I wore it.  This way, it will be from my wrist to hers, quite literally.  And a part of me will be with her to support her during this time.

I wasn’t going to mention it on here, but I decided that was being selfish.  She needs all the prayers and good thoughts being sent her way as possible, and if you could think of her and pray for her, I know she’d really appreciate it.  Her name is Helen.

Last night, I relaxed and worked on the Bordello sock.  I knitted the heel flap, turned the heel and got the gusset knitted.

I really love this sock yarn.  I love the colors and how the stripes change from half row to half row.  Making a pair of socks out of this yarn will be fraternal, but they will look so much alike that they might as well be identical.

And look how the pattern on the leg smoothly segged into the pattern on the heel flap.  Really nicely done.

Once I get a sock to this point, I like to try it on to see how it fits.  Niggling doubts were wandering around in the back of my mind because I still have rather chunky calves and I like socks with a lot of give, and this pattern has no give at all.  Not one iota of ribbing to be found on the leg and that worried me.  So I decided to test if my doubts were true.

And boy, were they!  I could not get it to go over my heel no matter how much tugging and pulling I did.  I felt rather like one of Cinderella’s ugly step-sisters trying to get that glass slipper to fit.  Crap, crap, crap, crap, CRAP!

Into the frog pond it went.  I still really love this yarn, but I will be pulling Nancy Bush’s Vintage Sock’s book out of the library and using this yarn to knit a pair of socks that I know fits me.  This yarn deserves to be made into a pair of socks that I will love wearing.  Sigh…

In other news, it was 14 degrees when I left for work this morning and the wind was blowing hard.  They were predicting 30 mph winds last night and I know several gusts hitting the wall beside my bed woke me in the night.  Wow!  We do have snow on the ground, but not thick enough to cover the grass, so we didn’t get the 3″ that was called for, but that is okay.  It is cold enough that it’s not going anywhere for a few days.  The power flickered several times last night, once staying off for about a minute.  But it came back on ans stayed on for the rest of the night, thank you God!

So, a week’s worth of knitting wasted…  But not really wasted.  I pulled out a worsted weight yarn that I have been saving to make a sweater from and I think the chevron pattern that I was knitting for the socks would be the perfect stitch pattern for this yarn and for the sweater.  It looks like I’ll be playing with the Sweater Wizard program this weekend and seeing what I can come up with.

The boys are growing by leaps and bounds (and quite a bit of the time, this is literal, not figurative), so I thought I show you how they are looking.

This is the best picture to show you how big Pete is getting compared to Dylan.  Dylan is still the stockier of the two and outweighs Pete by a pound or so, but Pete is getting big.

And this one shows you how long and lanky Pete is now.  He loves standing on my knees.  I’m not sure what he was looking at, but it sure caught his interest.

And sitting on my knee, too.  This one reminds me of Snoopy pretending to be a vulture.

And sitting on my shoulder, although he’s getting a bit big for this anymore.  Still he tries it whenever he can.  I love the mask on his face.

And Cutie-Pie Pete.  Isn’t he just adorable?  Don’t let this innocent, wide-eyed stare fool you.  A second or two before, he was chewing on my fingers.

Of course Dylan is a cutie, too.  He has the gentlest expression.  Most of the time, he’s really sweet and laid back, but there have been times when he was so wound up we swear he was running on the walls.

Hmmm…  I wonder what Dylan is looking at?

Oh, the strap on the camera.  That explains a lot, doesn’t it?