test test  ¶ 2:46 PM 0 Comments

  My Baby is 2! My baby, Kasie, turned 2 on Saturday, just 1 day after my birthday. I went into labor on my birthday 2 years ago, but too late in the day for her to come on my birthday. It's probably just as well...that way we each get our own special day, even if they are close together.

The Birthday Girl!


Kasie and her sister, Kelly


I myself turned 39 this year so the guys at work were cheated out of throwing me a black balloon party for 1 more year. Some of them wanted to try and say that I was turning 40, but the truth wins out every time.  ¶ 6:29 PM 0 Comments

  What I've been working on... I know that it's time I got the camera hooked up again as it's SOOOOO boring to read a knitting and spinning blog without pictures! Anyway, here's the body of the Hanne Falkenberg Mermaid sweater that is patiently awaiting the sleeves...



This is colorway #1 and I'll have to say that I'm very impressed with the way this garment is knit and shaped. Wait until you see the sleeves! I am almost finished with the first sleeve and I'll get a picture snapped soon.

I've also been knitting some socks. I decided to do 2 socks at the same time...something I don't usually do. I'm using the 2 circular method this time. The main reason I'm not using dpns is that I'm porting this project around in my purse and there's way too much opportunity to break my needles as I like to use Brittany's.



This yarn is just like the Cascade Fixation yarn. It's from Elann.com and it's called Sock It To Me. It's a cotton and elastic yarn and this will be the second pair of Fixation-type socks I've knitted. The first pair of Fixation socks I knit were these about 5 years ago. I've discovered I don't particularly like having patterned socks inside my shoes so will be knitting plain stockinette stitch on the instep from now on.

I actually bought this blue yarn from Elann in April 2005 and am just now getting around to knitting it up. I decided I wanted some solid color socks and this yarn, once you get used to knitting with it, makes nice tight fitting socks. I am using 3.5mm needles and cast on 44 stitches using PGR's short-row toeup method.

I'm hoping to get my knitting pages all fixed up and indexed, but I'm sure that it will take me some time.  ¶ 7:53 PM 0 Comments

  Checking In At least I didn't wait 4 months this time between posts! I'm still plugging away S---L---O---W---L---Y on the Mermaid sleeve. I'm now halfway through the first sleeve . Why didn't someone tell me how much time a second child would consume??!! She definitely doesn't see me knitting like Kelly did when she was 2 years old. Kelly, I'm sure, thought that Mommy came with needles and yarn permanently attached. Kasie thinks Mommy comes with HER permanently attached! She's a trick, that's for sure and she doesn't like for me to be doing anything that doesn't involve her. She likes to grab the needles and yarn any time that she sees me with them and supplant herself in my lap instead. But, that's OK...she's only young once and there's nothing more snuggly than a 2 year old laying in your lap giving you kisses.

Work is still spiraling downward and I'm trying to plan for an end soon. I want to go out on my own terms and not theirs. Makes it so much more palatable that way. It's way past time to reinvent myself anyway so we'll just have to see what the future brings. One thing I know for sure is that it will involve more time with my girls. I just have to make sure there's enough money in the coffers to pay for things first, but hopefully very soon. Maybe even by the end of the year.

  ¶ 12:46 PM 0 Comments

  Has it Really Been 4 Months?! I can't believe that it's been almost 4 months since I last posted! Yikes! I've been so swamped with work (see the previous post under Work and sure enough, there's more to do than I can handle) that it's all I can do to keep the home maintenance up, kids fed, etc. I had been off of the Flylady methods for some time but have reinstated them in my life several months ago and they've been a lifesaver! It's amazing what a difference routines have made in my life and only concentrating for "15 minutes at a time" as Flylady likes to say.

Knitting
I've finished the body of Mermaid and am now starting the first sleeve. So much for my desire to finish this sweater by the end of March. I did start knitting a new dishcloth as my older knitted ones are wearing out after about 4 years of use or more. Other than that, not much other knitting has been accomplished.

Work
Well, the people keep jumping ship by the droves. It's to the point of being ridiculous. I have more work than I can handle and it can never seem to get done fast enough to suit people. I don't think that it's because I work particularly slow either. It's just that people want stuff done NOW and in advanced engineering, there are no cut and dry procedures to do things. Hell, we're the ones who discover and create the procedures to do things and it's hard to put a timeline on that kind of work. It's more event driven than timeline driven although I am the first to admit that you DO have to put some kind of timeline on us eggheads or we'll spend our whole career engineering one thing to death. But on the other hand, we aren't genies and can't just snap our fingers and figure something out in a day or week either. So somewhere in between a single day and an entire career is a happy medium on an acceptable amount of time to complete a project. If anyone knows what that timeframe is, I'd be happy to hear it so that I can just put that in my planner and know that that's the amount of time I have to come up with a solution for any given problem.  ¶ 8:31 AM 0 Comments