four+ months of pictures

I've been busy. We've been busy having fun. Busy and fun are good as far as I can tell. Long story short, lots of living and not a lot of knitting. How about I just show you?

making our aprons

showing off her apron

dancing in the streets!

yoga in the streets

Seattle from the ferry

Cherry Street Park

Elevated Ice Cream bull ride

braiding extra bulky yarn in the hallway

Olympic Discovery Trail

Discovered salmon berries on the ODT

Spiderman face painting

Feeding the pony 

Port Angeles Pier

First glitter tattoo

learning to play t-ball

sweet messy face

the living room circus

Strawberries from our garden

One of many beach adventures

One zoo trip

Our garden produced A LOT of strawberries

more strawberries

Fourth of July fireworks in PA

Still that first trip to the zoo

Birthday party jumping castle

Obligatory carousel ride at the Point Defiance Zoo

beach discovery

The "jungles" of Chetzemoka Park

Tree climbing in Chetzemoka

The only picture I managed to take of this years Easter Sweater!

Our Easter eggs

Olympic Game Farm- talking to Khumba!

Lots of watermelon cuttings for Sureya to nibble

Matt and Trinity modeling their made-by-me knitwear

my new label (from the procrastaknitters needles-this took forever)

No, I don't make lots of money to afford vacations. Sureya and I, we make memories. A lot of these memories are made with friends and family, and wouldn't be as much fun otherwise (we aren't so exclusive that we can't play nice!) We squeeze as much fun as we can into every evening, every weekend, every holiday. Sometimes they are made in walks around the block, sometimes they are made at the zoo. We camp, we play in our back yard, we dig in our garden. We sew, we paint, we make big ole' messes in the kitchen. Every once in a while we get frustrated with one another, and then we move on to the next moment and try again.We live we laugh we love.And if you are ever out on the Olympic Peninsula, maybe we can play together.

Year 3 of the Easter Sweater

I am so ridiculously excited about this sweater. Sureya is old enough to pick her own colors this year, and she chose the brightest pink Myra had in the store. I grabbed a bag of mixed coordinating colors wound into small cakes because she is now big enough to need two skeins of yarn to complete one sweater. I happened upon the pattern in Ravelry, and now that all my other (important) pending projects are complete, I get to start on this years Easter Sweater.

On the not so good side Sureya is sick with a hacking boogery cough, and that means I am spending a day at home with a medicated and slightly loopy two year old.
Also, my new labels finally arrived! I really do think they look fantastic, and it mostly makes up for the frustration I felt at the process for getting them. I ordered them through Etsy, but the seller was not the best with communicating and it ended up being almost three weeks to receive them due to an illness on the sellers end. She did compensate for the delay by throwing in a few extra and they of course arrived the day after I needed them (to attach to some freshly knit baby clothes)but all my next knits will have new labels

So, there you have it, off to restock the Kleenex box and make more baby tea.

update, with pictures

Check it out, not even a month has gone by and I am already back-yay me! I finished the sweater on February 2nd, and Sureya debuted it during our family's annual Super Bowl party. EVERYONE pointed out that it wasn't Seahawks colored (or even tacky Broncos colors), but since I finished it before the game, I had time to sew in the seemingly endless ends and then pop it on her. The part I am totally leaving out is that the last two and a half rounds of the purple stripe on the left sleeve is an entirely different yarn in an entirely different color. Anyone that I pointed out to said they didn't notice until I pointed it out, but I knew it was there. There was just no way that I was going to go through the debacle of waiting for Knit Picks to send me one more ball of yarn when all I needed was about 4 yards. I stopped by A Dropped Stitch Yarns in Sequim on our way to Port Townsend on Saturday afternoon, talked out my conundrum with the surprisingly patient ("um, is your daughter running with knitting needles?!?")shop lady, and we narrowed it down to one lilac purple skein of Universal Yarns Worsted. I know, I put acrylic yarn blend into a wool sweater. Whatever. They promised it would wash the same, and after only one wash so far they weren't lying. (and I even added a picture of the crooked color-change line up the back of the sweater)

In other slightly un-related news, a dear dear friend of mine is battling Lyme disease and has currently got a page on GoFundMe to help raise funds for medical necessities. To know Matt is to love Matt, and once we talked out the tears we got to the grit of what's going on: his current antibiotic treatments run into the 1000's every month, the Lyme doctor that has been treating him is in Seattle (he lives in Arizona), and this particular disease is very unpredictable so he will feel normal for a few days, then be down and out for weeks. I don't expect everyone to donate, but at least look. This site is a wonderful way for humans to help other humans. Soon, I hope to have some more pictures to put here of Matt (and his steadfast girl Louisa) modeling their newest handknits- I whipped up a quick hat for Matt using more of the Swish Tonal in color Pacific, and Louisa is the lucky recipient of the Blue Angel shawl that just happens to coordinate beautifully with Matt's hat.

Until then, here is my first finished Olympics project-a quick and easy cup hugger made from some leftover Fancy Image fingering weight and Malabrigo Sock

six months later....

Not going to apologize this time! We moved, I changed jobs, Sureya changed daycares (twice)and my laptop officially gave up the ghost sometime in September. I bought myself a new computer for Christmas and had some time to actually update you all, and now that I spent the last twenty minutes attempting to sign into my blogger account (damn you google+)I have decided to go to bed. But here's a shoddy cell phone picture of my most awesome on the needles project, made with Swish Tonal and Swish Worsted from Knit Picks.

I finally decided it was time to knit Sureya a sweater that would fit her for longer than a season. I chose to do stripes, and about four gray stripes in realized there was no way I had enough of the yarn to finish the sweater. I placed another order for two more balls of the Swish Worsted (Dove) on Knit Picks and their lovely "Your item has shipped" email told me it would be delivered on January 15th. Until January 15th, when the shipping tracker suddenly switched to "anticipated arrival: N/A". What that tells me is they were overly ambitious in thinking they could get anything from Ohio to the forests of the Olympic Peninsula in one week. So for now, I am at a stall. I knit until there was only two inches of yarn left so I have something to attach the next ball: oh, the horror, I am not even going to match dye lots! It's just the ribbing at the bottom, and I am pretty sure the crooked color changes up the back of the sweater will be more horrifying in the long run.

Over the past few months I have knit mittens. Lots of mittens. Like ridiculous amounts of mittens to replace the mittens that Sureya manages to lose everytime she leaves the house. And then every seasoned knitter and well-versed parent pointed out that I needed to add a cord to run up the sleeves and keep the two hands connected. Duh. As if I hadn't thought of that with each smallish mitten I made, and promptly decided I just wanted to see her wear them once. And one time on her hands is all she needs to lose them. I am pretty sure the neighbors cat (pictured below) has been collecting mittens out of our yard and carrying them back to his winter nest.

I can't only blame Sureya for all the mitten knitting. I saw the great pattern on Knitty for these Spatterdash fingerless mittens, and had some yarn to make them in my stash. I made a pair for myself minus all the buttons, which I love. And then a co-worker at my new job saw them, and asked me to make two more pairs for her daughters for Christmas gifts. Sure, no problem, it was a great pattern, albeit one that I will never knit again. There are parts of the pattern now emblazoned in my memory and making three pairs on such small needles was tedious and made me hate knitting for a minute. However,the new job came with lots of training, where I sit alongside dozens of other new employees for weeks on end learning how to do things the way they need to be done, and since we can't be trusted to do anything on our own yet, my idle hands needed to be occupied.

I also kicked out the Blue Angel scarf (which is gorgeous but way too small for my ample physique) this adorable purple cable hat, and a matched set of Santa-ish hats for me and the little one.

Okay, for reals, good night. Someone has to get up, make the coffee, chase the toddler, and go to work in the morning, and I'm pretty sure I drew the short straw.