It's been a crazy few weekends here in our house. Steve and I hosted the End of Season Party for our Sunday night softball league. We had so much house cleaning and yard cleaning to do before everyone came over so that our house would be functional for more than just two people! In the spring we had some guys take down our giant silver maple in our backyard. Below is a picture of my size 6 feet standing on the stump when they were finished. (I'm going to try not to have this post be too picture heavy...but that's what happens when I don't post more often...crap!) We also had them take down a hard maple of some kind as well. So the first few weekends (and week days actually) We spent splitting wood. Steve and his Dad, Ray, did most of the work. I helped sometimes by running the splitter. I moved a lever back and forth while they did all the heavy lifting. Though I did also bring them water and kool-aid when they needed it. During the week I did my best to clean up the house. Honestly...if I wouldn't let it get so messy then I wouldn't have had to scramble to get it clean. House work is soo boring! (but I guess that's when you have to do it for a few hours all at once instead of five minutes every day) This is the room that Baby Ewoldt is staying in...this is the pre-party clean-up picture, but it's only half cleaned out. The huge gray desk is still in there and a few boxes full of yarn...but it's getting there. I only have until September 26th. In other news...I chopped my hair off.... Before: After: I am loving it! Short hair is awesome and the people at Locks for Love got all of this! I hope they enjoy!

I really stink at posting to a blog

So it's already March, my birthday has passed and I haven't written here since January. Obviously I haven't put up pictures of all the things I have yet to finish with my knitting, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy.

I have been amazingly good. I have not bought yarn, I did a commission project (a small boring scarf with awful yarn I didn't even bother taking a photo of), and I made 2 baby blankets. Other than those things I have been working on existing projects. It's hard.

I work in a knit shop. There is always new yarn, new books and patterns and loads of people coming in making beautiful things that I would just LOVE to try! Though at this point I think I'm starting to lose it. I saw someone knitting a small dog sweater and thought, "That looks neat." Umm....I DON'T HAVE A DOG! Not to mention that I think knitting a dog sweater is silly, mostly because I think small dogs are silly...big dogs don't need sweaters.

I have set aside yarn to buy when I do get down to 3 projects, but I still have a long way to go. I do get to start a new baby blanket for a friend who is having her baby in June. Hopefully that will hold me for a while.

I have 3 projects that are so close to being finished it's almost criminal. I have a shawl that has about 15 rows left which doesn't seem like a whole lot, but the rows are in the hundreds of stitches. Activity rows take me at least 30 minutes and that is when no one is interrupting me. I am making an upside down sweater that was all the rage at the knitting shop this fall. I have 3 more inches and a few ends to weave in. No seaming! So when I do those 3 inches I'm finished. I also have a cardigan that I am test crocheting for my friend. All i have left to do there is the other sleeve, which will be much faster than the first because I don't have to count to make sure that the pattern is working out. And then I need to make the trim.

If I actually take the time to work on these things then there is a possibility that I could have three finished objects by the end of this weekend. Awesome.

I have finished my NORO sweater, I should post a picture, but I don't have a nice one yet. Though it does look awesome. After I finish those other projects it will be time to dive into the pile and pick a few more to finish. I'm actually enjoying finishing these projects. It's nice to be able to add a pair of socks or a sweater to my wardrobe.

I'll have to post pictures, but then next time that I may have a chance to get here with any decent amount of time will be Saturday.

I'm still itching to start something new, especially a summer tank or something, but I need to stay strong. All the money that I don't spend on yarn will go towards going back to Mexico this next winter.

I'm going to knit now...

New Year's Resolution

I've been sitting on the couch for the past half hour wondering what to do with myself and then I thought, "Hey! I can use my blog for my New Year's Resolution!"

I was at work back in October and some customers were complaining that they had too many projects on the needles and that it was driving them bonkers. I decided then to count in my head the number of projects that I had. When I got to 15 I though, "Maybe I should write this down." I bet you can't guess how many I had. 33. That's more than a project per month! Granted it is projects from the 6 years that I have been playing with yarn.

I mulled that over for about a week and then decided that something needed to be done. Not only do I have at least five pairs of socks that could be on cold feet, but five sweaters that I could be enjoying in this lovely 15 degree weather. So I am not going to purchase yarn or start new projects in the year 2011 until I have cleared my needles to one project. After that I will not allow myself to have going at one time more than three items and no more than one sweater at a time.

My husband thinks this is a great idea. He loves that I have a great hobby, but the sheer amount of project bags and needles and yarn is starting to get to him. He knows about the plan because I'm going to need all the support I can get. He's around me enough to know that if I've been camping out in my stash room for a few days that I've started a new project. I have also told my Monday night knitting group. They all thought I was crazy, until I told them the number of projects that I have sitting around.

You can watch my progress as the months go by on here and on ravelry. My ID there is also Dontpokeme311.

I've already finished a few projects since that wonderful day in October and it feels good. It even feels good to have it all organized and into separate project bags. As of the last count I have 32 projects to complete. That's almost three per month and it doesn't include the yarn that I have sitting around destined for a certain project.

It's going to be hard. I will try to put up a list in the next few days of what exactly I have to do. It should be fun. I'm excited now, but I work in a yarn shop, new fun yarn comes in everyday. I think I'll be wanting to shoot myself by the end of the year.

Anyone else has a good resolution?

Peer Pressure

So I've been told that I need to blog more often. I haven't since August! Wow... I work at a yarn shop now and I'm always working on new projects because I can't seem to stick with one long enough to finish it.

Maybe I can improve my writing skills. I bounce from topic to topic too quickly for most people to keep up (sometimes even myself).

We'll see...maybe I can get into the habit of taking pictures and posting the things that I do. It might help me to remember what I did with a particular pattern when I decide to come back to it after 4 months.

Midwest Fiber & Folk, and Family

These past few weekends have been a tad crazy. Crazy in a good way though.

I’ve been working hard on my OWL for the Harry Potter Knit & Crochet House Cup on Ravelry. Here’s a picture. I have maybe 10 inches left of knitting the lace pattern, and 8 for the cowl neck. The ‘sleeves’ are just an inch or two of ribbing. Yay for drop shoulders! And this needs to be finished by Friday, July 31^st to count. I should be able to make that if I work hard tonight and all day Wednesday.

I was hoping to wear this thing this last weekend…but we’ll get to that in a sec.

Two weekends ago I was at the Midwest Fiber and Folk show in Crystal Lake, IL. I was helping out my friend Bev and her knitted jewelry business Knitter’s Journey. She’s on Ravelry and she has a website showing all of her kits. Here’s a few pictures of the set up. This took more work than you could ever see from the pictures.

See those pretty baskets? Yea…we kinda forgot to pack those in the SUV. And we didn’t realize this until we were already at the show and setting up! Believe me…we couldn’t have all those bags hangin’ out without a basket. So we grabbed some pizza, drove the 2 hours home and then the 2 hours back and got up early to set up the rest of the booth on Friday morning. I think we made good time and got things set up nicely. Needless to say next time I think a checklist will be used to make sure that all things are in the car. ^_^

I picked up some yarn at the show as well as a few of Bev’s kits.

This green yarn is from Frontier Fiber Mill in Indiana. They have their own fiber farm complete with Alpacas and sheep and other sorts of things! This is 400 yds. of worsted Alpaca. It’s sooooo soft! I’m thinking mittens, though it might decide otherwise.

This here is 925 yds. of laceweight wool for $18. Pretty good deal huh? I love it. Sunset colors. This one might have to sit in my stash for a while before I decide what to do with it.

This next yarn boggles my mind. The lady that spins this yarn is blind. BLIND! That means she just feels the yarn. And her tag has Braille on it so that she can tag them herself. I should have gotten a picture of her and her husband. They are such a cute couple and he completely supports her. (She also had a pretty neat calculator that spoke to her so that she could take care of sales.) I’m making the Sylvia Cowl. It’s a light pink thick and thin yarn(ranging from laceweight to a light worsted). I’m really liking how it’s turning out.

Wow lots of pictures!

I left the festival early to go to Festa Italiana at the Milwaukee Summerfest grounds. I felt back for leaving Bev all day Sunday and for her having to pack up alone, but Festa Sunday is a family tradition. We attend church and walk in the procession into the grounds to get in for free. Once that’s finished we promptly walk out of the grounds and eat lunch at the Italian Community Center.

Lunch was a little disappointing. I mean…Italian Community Center…it’s been that for years! I’ve always loved their food, but this year the pasta sauce was terrible. I mean…it was like tomato soup with a little basil in it… I was sad. My German Fiance can make better pasta sauce than that! He actually makes great pasta sauce…so that’s not really fair. I swear he was Italian in a former life.

Other than a disappointing lunch it was a great day. I scored an Italian soccer jersey for $28! The last few years they’ve been rather expensive since Italy won the world cup in 2006. I’m excited for the games next summer. I make a point of watching soccer during at that time. It’s like how I only watching basketball during the College March Madness. I choose when to enjoy certain sports.

That was the end of that weekend. This weekend was an engagement party for Steve and I. Honestly, I was dreading this party. My father wanted to have this party so that people from both sides of the family could meet and socialize before the actual day of the wedding. Sounds like a great idea in theory…but I was scared that it would just be a big segregated party. Thank goodness for Steve’s parents. They really got in there and got to know everyone! I was so grateful that everyone was talking. My father’s brothers and sisters tend to stick to themselves and they were also very good about talking and including everyone. I don’t have pictures of the party…my mom was the paparazzi for that. I’ll have to ask her for some pictures. It was really a lot of fun.

Sunday was our annual Cefalu Family Reunion. Umm….but only half. There are two sides of the Cefalu family. Our side of the family, which is corralled by my cousin Dave for this event, and the other side. We only see the other side at this event every year. Mario is in charge of gathering this side of the family(can’t tell we’re Italian huh?). We missed the reunion last year to celebrate Steve’s Dad’s 60^th birthday, but I guess Mario’s side didn’t show and they did a repeat of that this year. I learned that Mario’s side of the family tends to get into feuds every few years. Not feuds with us, just feuds within themselves. So I guess it might be a few years before we see them again.

It was a good time. A huge softball game with players ranging from age 6 to age mid-forty-something. It was fun to watch. I was playing with the real little guys because of my shins.

Steve and I have started running in the wee hours of the morning. We already woke up at 6 in the morning, but now we have a 5:15 wake up call. It’s been alright getting up, but staying awake the rest of the day was pretty hard last week. This week has been better. My problem now is that my right shin hurts bad enough that I’m limp running…that does not seem like a good thing to me. Today we took a break because it was raining, we slept bad, my leg needs a rest, and we’re a bit lazy. I decided that if my leg feels alright later that we’ll take a walk…if it doesn’t feel better it may be time for me to get it checked out. I’ve already changed shoes, taken a break for a day or two and iced. It doesn’t seem to be getting much better.

This is what I'm busy working on at the moment.

It's much longer...That needs to be finished by tomorrow!! (wow...just realizing that tomorrow is the 29th...crap!)

and then my OWL...which is also a lot farther than this picture. I'll have to do a better update later...but this is what I have to work with at work...

This is a long post…maybe I’ll need to insert pictures here and there to make it more interesting. That really concludes my entry. I need to send some of these pictures to Bev…maybe I can get that finished here at work. We’ll see if I can access the pictures. If not… I’ll add them tonight or tomorrow.

Later this week…how work is screwing us out of money.

Finally

I get a weekend at home! Though I did have to ask for it. We were planning on going up north to the cabin this weekend with Steve's parents...yea...wasn't really feelin' that. We just spent last weekend in the Wisconsin Dells for his Mom's 60th birthday. I had fun, but I really don't need to see a million people every weekend. It's not even that I haven't had that much time to knit, it's really that I want to spend more time with Steve...alone... We spend every weekend running around with either my family or his and next weekend we're going to be hanging out with friends from Michigan.

Then we'll at least have one weekend where hopefully we have nothing going on. Then it'll be the Festa Italiana weekend and then the Engagement party/Family Reunion weekend. I swear...it's almost like school can't come fast enough for me. I love the break and the fact that for the most part it's warm outside, but I feel like this summer is going to fly past.

On better news, here's what I've been working on.



Making some headway with Steve's jacket. I did also find a zipper and I'm very excited about that.



I'm excited about these, they are fun to make. The pattern only has written out instructions and it's starting to drive me nuts so I will probably be making out a chart pretty soon and sending it to the person who wrote the pattern so that she can make it available to everyone. They are the Regina Mitts on Ravelry. I'm too lazy to link those right now. So I guess you'll just have to deal. I think I might go work on my Aeolian Shawl....even though that won't get me any points for the House Cup. I'm just not really feelin' it this month...

Drunken Post

Well...

I'm a leeettle drunk-ish right now. Also a little tired. I can't seem to sleep lately. It's hard. It's a good thing I have work or I would become nocturnal like I did when I was without job or school for about 4 months...bad idea. I just like the night better. I guess it just fits who I am. Though most of the things you can do at night involve sitting around or midnight bowling...lol.

I've been working on knitting a lot lately, again. The House Cup has really kept me going. I have to step it up a little though if I want to get 25% of my sweater done by the end of June. Good thing there isn't a lot going on.

My parents are trying to plan an engagment party for me and Steve. That should be interesting. My parents can't seem to plan things very well. It's a little over a month away and the only thing we know is the weekend that we're having it. Supposedly having it that is...ugh...I have a feeling that this will be a nightmare. But I can't really say no, can I?

Well yea...We'll see how that plays out. Things are going well though. No complaints for the most part. It's exactly a year before Steve and I are going to be married. At this point we will be in a hotel room all by ourselves and married...awesome! I think I will be very glad when that is over. And that's basically because of our familes, but I've gotten the vibe that most brides feel that way. I'm just scared that I have a year left of feeling that way.

Probably time for bed before I say something that could get me in trouble down the line when someone finds this that shouldn't, but that's the risk of putting your opinion online...