While trapped in the house due to chicken pox quarantine and blazing heat avoidance, I’ve been trying to accomplish things around the house. Most of these things don’t lend themself to blogging, unless you’re interested in:

• disposing of plastic food storage containers with no matching lids (or vice versa),
• recycling cardboard boxes strewn about the garage,
• putting books on the bookcase we moved upstairs,
• packing up old school books to send back to K12 to make room for the new books that will arrive any day now,
• posting our old microwave on Freecycle,
• or pulling the creeping weeds of evilness that invaded our yard.

One project is photogenic enough to warrant mention, though. Using this starched fabric decal tutorial, I added a giraffe to Brady’s room.

The recessed area above his bed was definitely lacking something. I wanted an easily removed, cheap bit of artwork since the Pottery Barn jungle animal motif will disappear when the baby outgrows his crib. Using this lamp for inspiration:

I bought two yards of white and yellow gingham fabric for $2 at our local Store-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named, as well as a 52 cent scrap of orange. I made an enlarged paper pattern of the giraffe using Rapid Resizer, cut out the body, and stuck the fabric up there using the tutorial directions. I was concerned that the bumpy wall texture (prevalent in Arizona houses) would cause a heinous end result, but it worked out fine (although smooth walls = best results). I then cut some freehanded orange spots; in retrospect, I would have liked a lighter orange, but not enough to warrant a trip to another fabric store.

Kyle thinks that I should add a tree. And clouds. And a bird. (This project was easy, but not THAT easy.)

I vaguely recall that this was originally supposed to be a knitting blog. My knitting output has diminished greatly since the baby arrived. (Note: I was knitting prior to his arrival, but failed to document any of it. It involved booties and hats that were outgrown in the blink of an eye, because Brady is in the 90th percentile for height/weight.) But while we’re discussing crafty stuff, I’ll post this:

The second sleeve to my #@!* Hourglass Sweater, which had better fit this time around. I am so close to finishing it, but am so bored of endless stockinette stitch with Classic Elite Bam Boo (Bougainvilla) yarn that hurts my hands.

And this:

A Shadow Scarf in Knitpicks Shimmer (Bayou). I was working on one of these before my lace yarn met a tragic end and I frogged the whole thing. (Pussycat has only attacked the yarn for this scarf during the initial winding, resulting in minor damages. Knock on wood.) I like knitting lace. It appeals to my perfectionist side. This project is highly portable with an easily memorized pattern (about all I can hope for at the moment) and the resulting fabric is super soft and cuddly. Yay!

My intention was for a portion of this blog to be devoted to knitting, because lord knows there aren’t enough knitblogs in the world. Especially knitblogs from knitters who churn out run-of-the-mill, entirely uninspiring projects on an irregular basis. Like yours truly.

Seriously…since I started homeschooling the boys, my knitting time has decreased significantly. Take this Jayne Hat for instance. It’s a hat. Simple, right? I started it this summer. And I just completed it. Granted, it sat around waiting for an earflap for ages, but still!

I used a pattern that I can’t even find online anymore- I believe the site in question no longer exists. (It wasn’t one of the more widely used patterns, though.) The hat turned out a bit too slouchy and long (which I tried to correct with blocking, to no avail), but it isn’t horrible for my first ever knitted hat. I have a ton of Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride left over, so my intention is to try again with a different pattern.

That is, after I finish Quinn’s quickie sweater…made with 100% acrylic (shudder!)…that he picked out at Wal-mart (shudder!).

On a related note…This Jayne hat cell phone holder? Adorable.

Edited to add: Found it! This was the pattern in question. 

Note to self: Do not sit by the pool for hours, sipping Mud Slides, without slathering all of your extremities with sunscreen. Particularly if you are wearing capri pants. Because when you go to dance class later that evening:

(1) Your legs will hurt like hell, the pain will ruin your concentration, and you will forget all of your steps and look like an idiot.

(2) In the vein of “looking like an idiot”- your fellow dancers will openly mock your unique burn pattern. You will have to repeat the tale of your stupidity over and over again: “I spent the day at the pool. Yes, I was wearing capri pants. How did you guess?”

(3) You will be forced to run to the nearby Food City to buy a pair of socks that only reach your ankles (rather than subject your sunburn to the torture of gluing your poodle socks to your shins with body adhesive). Then you will spend the rest of the night pulling those new socks up between dances.

I was going to finish my bag for Sew? I Knit! and/or the back of my Summer Capelet today, but I think this situation calls for a Jamba Juice and the Tivo. Instead of this:

Much time has passed between posts, but I have a list of good reasons for that. A sampling of my excuses:

• We took a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate our wedding anniversary (because that’s the place where it all began). Thanks to modern technology, I could have blogged during the trip, but I chose to neglect you in favor of my sweet husband, margaritas, The Apprentice slots, and the Flavor of Love marathon on VH1.
• We’ve been cleaning the house. Like, seriously cleaning the house. We even rented an industrial carpet cleaner from Home Depot. I am determined to make everything clean and pretty while the weather is still nice. When the serious heat descends upon us in a month or two, we will be trapped in the air-conditioned house and I will go mad if it is dusty and smells like dog.
• I’m in first place in the basketball pool. The $600 prize would buy a lot of yarn (or a perhaps a Roomba Scheduler). I have to give my full attention to the games, or I will certainly lose. (My bracket is busted, so we’re rooting for LSU and George Mason now. They’re my only hope.)
• The kids were on spring break. Which wouldn’t have been bad, except for the fact that spring break led up to St. Patrick’s Day, which was quite chaotic for our family. Quinn (my son) is an Irish dancer, so it entailed lots of driving to various performances across the Valley.
• I started dancing in February. I am eager to move out of the adult beginner class and into the grade 3-4 class (Quinn’s class) so I won’t have to sit in the dance studio lobby for 2+ hours every Thursday night (although I do accomplish much knitting during that time) while I wait for my class to start. Moving up means forgoing blogging, knitting, reading, etc. in favor of practicing my single jig.

I did finish something during my time in the lobby, though…

Pattern: Legwarmers from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Yarn: Cascade Quatro #5016 and Rowan Kidsilk Haze #600
Other Details: I cast on 52 stitches instead of 46 because I am a very tight knitter. I had ordered the Madil Kid Seta that the pattern calls for, but it looked too pink when held together with the Cascade, a situation which necessitated a desperate run to my LYS for the Rowan.

This project was a bit boring to knit (even by my standards), but was a fine choice for those times when I needed something portable that I could do while distracted. (Like, I’ve taken the Lucky Clover wrap along with me and usually end up frogging whatever I knit in the dance studio. People talk to me and everything goes to hell.) The legwarmers don’t look as cute and slouchy on me as they do on the model. (I know there was a stylist who set up that back-of-the-book shot to look just so…Sigh.) I always thought that I had pretty twiggy lower legs, but I think these make them look kind of elephantine.

My recent knitting ennui has spilled over into other areas of my life. Like blogging. Why is that? I don’t know. It makes no sense! For instance, I’m sitting here at the computer, waiting for hundreds of high-resolution wedding photos to upload to DotPhoto. Perfect time to dash off an entry or finish tweaking the blog template, right? Instead, I find myself reading page after page of forum posts on last night’s episode of The Bachelor. I suppose that I have to start somewhere, so what follows is a post about a random assortment of stuff…

In an attempt to break out of my knitting slump, I finally finished off my Isis scarf. The one that I began back in December, when I fell in love with the purple one that I made as a gift for someone else.

It’s just a basic garter stitch scarf, made with Colinette Isis yarn held together with a string of Berroco Laser FX. I wish that I would have refrained from adding the Laser FX, because the Isis yarn is quite pretty on its own. The sequins propel this scarf into super-girly territory…like something Barbie would knit. Not to mention that I despise the white string that peeks out here and there. Another regret: I bound off too tightly, because I was in a hurry to finish the thing before heading off to bed.

Of course, it’s 81 degrees outside and my chances of wearing it are slim, so none of this really matters at the moment. (Where is my rain, Bill Bellis?!)

In other news, I finally bought my long-coveted Poang chair from Ikea. It is now sitting in the perfect sunny spot in the loft where the papasan chair used to be. (Adios, papasan chair! May you never tip over and dump another unsuspecting person onto the floor again!) The bad news is that one and/or both of the cats have decided that my new chair is a splendid resting spot, but only when my back is turned. This means that I have to swipe it with a lint roller every time I want to sit down, or face the world with a furry bottom.

One final bit of news: I have almost polished off an entire box of Girl Scout cookies. Samoas, to be exact. Why does there have to be a Brownie living right across the street from our house? How am I supposed to resist that kind of temptation?