Just Fluttering Thru

I have been busy as a bee with my knitting and for the most part staying out of trouble. I finished up with the 2nd pair of short socks for Katie just yesterday and have not bothered to take pics yet but probably should before they go in the mail. But my biggest news is that the body of Audry II is finished!!!! Praise be to the knitting gods cause if I had to knit one more mitered square I think I would end it all. But the little icord border that Shelly Kang put on hers in 3 days?? Well I think mine will take just a tad longer, maybe 3 weeks?? I am not sure why she was able to get hers done so fast. She mentions that she flew thru the parts where she had used a provisional cast on. I had 2 short segments where I had live stitches and I found those to be the slowest going. So I am glad I did not do more provisional cast-on and stuck to cable cast on for those edges. Another stumbling block for me was just figuring out the best way to do an applied icord for this project and finally after many false starts, decided to do mine with 4 stitches, knitting the 1st each time thru the back of the stitch, slipping the 4th, knitting a stitch up from the edge, and passing the slip stitch over. Oh and working from the back side. But then after finally getting about 6" done I decided I did not like the yarn color I chose. So I took almost a whole afternoon to dye a skein of yarn that I thought would work. It was quite a labor intensive dye job and until I was finally able to knit in onto the edge, I was not sure it was even going to work. But again, the knitting gods blessed me with the perfect yarn and I am finally off to the races. So next post I should have a picture of AudryII and maybe I can finally call her a FO!! Oh-And get this. My DH who never says a lot about any of my projects-let alone compliment one of them-actually told me it was way to pretty to be a regular old afghan!!!! I almost fainted when he said that. But a regular old afghan is what she is and I can't wait until it is cool enough to use her for the first time.

I have gotten started on dyeing my new cone of fingering weight yarn for a sweater project I will be starting soon. Today I did cochineal and along with dyeing my fingers red, I got 2 shades of pink and 2 almost identical skeins of rich true red. One of these needs to be maroon so I am thinking of overdyeing it lightly with walnut which is the darkest brown I have access to. I think if I just give it a hint of the walnut it will be different enough from the true red to work in the sweater. This weekend I plan on doing the browns, using the walnut extract, the aged pecan hulls I picked up at Ft. Sill and coffee. I need a cream so I think that I can get that using the spent pecan dyestock. Then I am going to do a dark green using some black hollyhock blossoms I have been squirreling away for weeks now in the fridge. Then I will be ready to start knitting. Well-except I promised myself to finish the aran cardigan first.......darn those pesky WIP's that hang around and haunt you.

Everything else is "same old-same old". The house is still up for sale with very few lookers. The weather is unbearably hot, Dh is a grouch because of both and I need a vacation. Which leads to my upcoming trip to the Nashville Quilt show. I am excited not just to see old friends and new but to stay at the one hotel in the whole US I have always wanted to stay at. I am staying at the Grand Old Opry hotel and convention center. I probably have the 1 room furthest away from everything but I am OK with that. I will put on my walking shoes and walk every single step of the gardens and atriums and probably take a million pictures. AudryII is going with me so she can have her picture taken one last time at some place really really cool. And I sure hope the weather is a tad bit better than here-oh hell it just has to be.. Til next time-stay cool and stay crafty!!

Audry II @ 500!!

I love Dutch Iris. Or as some call it, The Florist Iris. It grows from a bulb instead of a tuber, blooms only once each year and does much better in cut flower bouquets. The bulbs usually only make it a couple of years here in Oklahoma before needing to be replaced. I have not done that in the last few years so I am down to only a few blooming this year. But these beauties surprised me. I looked out one morning and saw them blooming out of the grass, where we had removed a flower bed last fall. I just had to run out and cut them all to bring into the house. At first they were all the gorgeous deep royal blue you see in the background with just the bright yellow just on the falls. The 2nd flower out of the buds a few days later looked completely different!! All the yellow tiger striping appeared out of nowhere!! I don't remember these doing this last year but then again I was working all the time and could have just missed it. I will absolutely be planting alot more of these mysterious Dutch Iris in the future and watching for the magical transformation to happen again.

This was another week with DH home again and stifling my creativity!! He is completely better after the surgery although he still can't completely rotate his neck fully yet. But he is going back to work tomorrow-Yippee!!!! Cartwheels!! Victory Dance!!! I would love to say I am going to get back to yarn dyeing, maximum knitting and lots of good long walks. But alas if we ever hope to get moved the packing must get done. And now we have a deadline to meet. We have a shipper coming on the 12th to take away almost all of the remaining stuff in the house. We will be left with just what we absolutely need to exist for however long it takes to sell the house. So for the next week I have to be a packing fool and the fun stuff will have to be done in wee amounts as I can steal the time during the day. As soon as the movers get the stuff out of here then I have to deal with all the floors in the house being replaced. I guess I just take my lonely wing chair and move it from spot to spot as they work and just stay out of their way!! The real estate agent that we plan on using gave us a list of things that need done to help sell the house. And a lot of it is cosmetic stuff that I also have to do cause DH swears he still can't lift a paint brush!! I have to strip the dining room wallpaper, pull all the ivy that is attached to the outside of the house off, trim the honeysuckle, rub scratch cover over all our woodwork(there is lots) and then use a varnish/sealer, and a few things I am probably forgetting. But does it sound like fun? NO Does it sound like I will get much knitting done? NO Does it sound like we will finally be actually moving? YES YES YES!!

Now for the little bit of knitting I did get done this week. I managed to get both shoulders knit on the aran cardigan but they are going to be ripped back out this week so I can tweak the very start of the saddle just a bit. It is just too wide across the saddle and the angle is too pointy. I spent one evening on each saddle so it is not a huge investment in time to get it right. I have had it on and the body fits amazing, so I want the rest to look as good as possible. I will also have to shorten the sleeves a bit but I have read several tutorials and am confident I can do it easily. Then just prepping the steaks, cutting them and knitting on the buttonband!!

I did start a pair of toe-up socks with some Plymouth "Happy Feet". It is a fuller yarn than I usually knit with so I can work with 60 stitches on size 2's and it is going pretty fast. No pics yet but maybe next week when I am past the first heel.

Now I did manage to keep up pretty well with Audry II. She has now passed the 500 mark. Which means I have used 1000grams of yarn or over 10 pairs of socks worth!!! Oh my-and I am just a tad over half way done!!! But she got to go out visiting again this weekend and got her 500 picture taken in several different locations. By the time she gets to 600 we ought to be in North Carolina, visiting the DGD's and she will get that picture taken there. Maybe at the beach, draped around the beautiful granddaughters, keeping them warm from the chilly ocean breezes!! And last but not least-I got my progressive round robin challenge blocks back. Oh my, they are just lovely. I may not have mentioned that the fabric I sent around was all Civil War repos but I gave everyone freedom to do whatever type of blocks they chose. And they all did choose very well indeed!! I love the way other people can look at your fabric and use it in a way you would have not thought of, or maybe were not brave enought to. There are several blocks where the maker used fabric for the background that I would not have imagined. But now it is going to make this project sing!! I am so sorry I do not have the time to put these blocks together until after we are moved but they are going to the top of my priority list. These pics are ones I have stolen from my DQF's blog. She got to go to the retreat where they officially unveiled everybody's projects and got these pictures there. I have been lazy and have not gotten my blocks back out to take a pic so hopefully she will not be mad that I slurped from her!!! I am pretty sure that I will not be getting back to blogging on a regular schedule any time soon. It is just to crazy with the move and I am not getting alot of anything done that you guys would be interested in. But I will try not to go too long so you all forget me!! Until next time-keep up the knitting. Remember-we must stimulate the economy by buying yarn!!

A Man and His Cat

As you can see, my Clemetis are in bloom this week. Taking a pic was a challenge because they just bounce around on their dainty stems with the slightest breeze tickling their petals. and of course this is Oklahoma so we have had gale force winds for days on end. But the other evening, just before sunset, the winds suddenly died down to nothing and I ran to get the camera and get outside. I had to climb on a lawnchair and balance with my elbows on the fence to get this shot but by gum, it is a lovely one and worth the athletics involved!!

It has been a quiet week here at the ranch. Ken is much better almost 2 weeks since his surgery. But man oh man, does he take this recuperating thing seriously. He gets up after 8 hrs of sound sleep, leisurely eats some breakfast, takes a nice walk and then comes back in the house and either gets on the computer or starts watching TV. Very little calories are burned by this man the whole entire rest of the day. The pic at the end of this post is one I just shot this evening. A man and his cat-doing what they do best!!

Audry II is still progressing although I am going to have to slow down on her a bit. It is getting just a bit too hot to have it all over me as I knit, so I stick to the cooler parts of the day. I am also starting to get just a tiny bit sick of knitting on her day in and day out, longing for other projects to occupy my mind. I also discovered that I am going to want her to be just a tad bit bigger than I originally thought. I was counting on 800 squares and now I am thinking more like 900. I am at 450 now and it just seems half way done to me. So my goal is to try and still knit about 4 to 5 sq's a day and work on other projects to give me back some variety in my knitting day.

The Aran cardigan is also coming along just fine. I have decreased at the raglan points for about 12 rows so far and it is looking like a real sweater finally. I am quickly coming up on the saddle shoulder shaping and that scares me just a wee bit. So far every time I try to read her directions they don't sink in. But I think it will make more sense when I am actually trying to do the step as I am reading it. I have noticed a few mistakes that I have made along the way. One is a wrong cable crossing on the center back cable. I did not notice it till I was 24 rows past it and just could not see trying to drop that many rows of stitches down to try and make the repair. And no way I was frogging it once those sleeves were attached. So I stepped back a few inches and with the yarn I am using, I decided it really isn't that noticable. Ain't dark yarn wonderful!! There is also at least on of the mini cables crossing the wrong way but I knew I was going to live with that. If I can put up with the main big cable having a mistake, no way was 2 stitches twisted wrong gonna cause me any lost sleep!!

I got a new book from Barnes & Noble today on dyeing yarns. It is "Yarns to Dye For" by Kathleen Taylor. So far I am not finding a lot that I have not already learned thru my friends on Ravelry. But given a little more time, there may a few hints that rock my world, just gotta find them. It is a pretty book and would be great for a truly beginning yarn dyer.

I finally have gotten my airline reservations made for my trip to see the DGD's at the end of May. I am so looking forward to seeing them, even if this trip slows our move down just a little bit. I need to start making plans of some of things we want to do while I am there. I have never had to entertain a 9 & 7 year old girls for 2 weeks before. I am sure that I will end up being glad that they are still in school for most of the time I am there. I can rest up for 6 hrs each day, knowing that as soon as they walk thru the door I will be on the run until bed time. And for 2 little girls who go to bed so well for their parents, they sure can try grandma's patience when I want them to go to bed!!

So now that I have decided to slow down on Audry, maybe I can get the aran done just a bit sooner. That means I need to be planning another knitting project. Of course I could also get started hand quilting my friendship quilt the Scrappies made for me. I just love the new found energy that comes with thinking and planning new things. If it would just carry thru the entire life of the project. But wait-I have done very very well with Audry II-450 squares in just about 10 weeks, for an average of over 6 a day. I bet not many others have blazed along much faster than that. So with that I am going to go retire to my knitting spot and get started on my daily dose of Aran Cardigan...

Body and Sleeves Wed in Holy Matrimony!!

It has been a long time coming but finally I have sleeves and body all on one circular needle. So now I have to carefully read the "pithy" directions that came from Elizabeth Zimmerman by way of SchoolHouse Press. And let me tell you they are clear as mud to me right now. Maybe I am just not "pithy" enough what ever that really means!! But I will press on and I am sure I will figure it out as I go. I had forgotten how many stitches end up on the needles right after joining body and sleeves on a raglan style sweater. It feels like it takes forever just to make one round. But don't you just enjoy eating away at that number as you make those wonderful decreases up to the shoulders? This sweater is saddle shouldered, similar but not exactly like a raglan so soon I will be entering totally new territory. According to the pattern along with the front body steek I will also be using a neckline steek-eeeekkkkkkk-steeks!! It shouldn't be to long before I have to take that plunge and make the cuts. Maybe 2 more weeks? Oh the agony of it all!!

I am also proud to announce that I officially made it to the half way point on Audry II. I hit 400 squares the other morning while waiting for hubby to be discharged from the hospital after his surgery(more about that later in the post). The day of his surgery I knit 13 squares and my arms and wrists just about rebelled when I picked it up to knit the next day. But the afghan got alot of attention from 1 lady in the waiting room and the doctor when he came out to talk to me after the procedure. I love it when people notice AudryII(blush, blush)!!

I did not get a chance to do alot of dyeing but I badly needed to whip out 2 small skeins for a sock yarn trade I am in to benefit Audry II. I had ideas in my head but of course what I produced was nothing like my ideas!! The self striping came close but the other-not at all. In fact the "other" was so ugly that I had to break out the dyes the next day and over dye it. But now I love it and have learned another in a long line of lessons in my dyeing voyage. The base yarn for this adventure was my long awaited "Trekking XXL" from Webs and I have to say that even tho it felt rough before dyeing it was wonderful after taking up the color. And the gauge was finer than the Knitpicks Bare so for now it will be my yarn of choice even if it is almost double the price.

Now for some of the more personal stuff going on in my busy life right now. Nothing earth shattering but important none the less. First of all my husband finally got the surgery done on his neck to fix the pesky herniated disc he had been living with for months now. I knew the surgery was not going to be all that bad since I had exactly the same thing done almost 9 years ago. As expected he did very well during the surgery and his recovery is going great. He says the pain in his neck is much better although he still has numbness & tingling in his hand. The doc told him it could take weeks to months for that to resolve but DH wants it NOW of course. He is not supposed to drive for 3 weeks so he is going to work from home-I offered to drive him in each day but noooooooooo-he wants to be home and bugging me!! I bet he gets bored enough next week to want to get out of the house so I will just bide my time and he will eventually get back out of my hair.

Another kind of big thing has to do with my son who lives in the LA area and has struggled with the financial aspect of that for 7 years now. He has had a roommate, given up his car & driving, eats as cheaply as he can and still he can't really make ends meet. So what does he do? Quits his job!!! To finish writing a book that he has no promise of getting published. What is the boy thinking? So we have asked him to move back home and live with us until he gets his book finished and decides what to do next with his life. We have never supported him even thru college so we don't have a problem with helping him some now. We can actually use him to help with the back breaking task of moving from here to our new location and eventually getting our new place set up. And we would love to have a built in house sitter for a year or two so we can do some travelling even if we get some small farm animals like the chickens I so dearly want. But we will see if he wants to even do this since I know he will feel somehow like this means he is a failure, which he is not. So if everyone will say a little prayer that his heart leads him home and that we can make it all work. By the way-we are looking for a house in Tennessee or Alabama with separate living quarters on the property!!!! We are not that crazy to want him underfoot 24/7!!

Same old-Same Old....

I feel guilty for not sticking to my weekly blogging schedule. I feel guilty for not having anything to blog about more. Face it, right now my life is boring. Even to me. But this stray from someones garden was blooming so brightly the other day that I just had to stop and snap it's picture. I am guessing it was from last year's radish or broccoli crop that went to seed. I love when life is so boring that I have time to stop and notice what I would not have seen otherwise. So boring is alright with me. As long as it does not go on for too much longer!!

Because I am devoted to 2 of the most time consuming knitting projects known to man, my knitting for the week is probably going to bore you also. Audry II is still coming along on schedule. I usually set my goal at 2 rows a week and usually I get a bit more done than that. I have also managed to get one dyeing session in a week. Any more than that just makes to much mess and I run out of good ideas. This week's dyeing was fairly good. I got the idea to make a base yarn of medium grey and then put little spots of bright colors randomly so they just show up as 2 or 3 stitches at a time against the grey. I kind of got what I wanted with the colors. The grey was fine and the brights were still bright enough to be seen after the overdyeing. I realized when I was almost done that somehow the blue I had mixed and used once got set aside and never used again. And it was such a pretty color in the end product-oh well. And the bits of color really needed to be placed closer together but again this is still a learning process. I also overdyed more of the beige/cream/grey On-Line yarn that I used before. I overdyed 1-8g skein with purple, 1 with yellow and then dyed a little bit bigger skein with a combo of 2 different dark oranges. First I mixed a very dilute sun yellow with a touch of dilute vermillion both leftover from dyeing the grey yarn. I soaked about 1/3 of the skein in that for about 15 minutes. I wasn't all that thrilled with the color but I decided to muck on. So I took and dyed the other 2/3 with the same mixture only with the rest of the leftover vermillion mixed in. I kept that in the dye for another 15 minutes. I still didn't think I liked the colors until after they dried and I fell in love with them. It is the prettiest bittersweet colorway. The grey & beige in the original yarn became lovely variegations over the 2 shades of burnt orange. My only regret is not making the skein long enough so the 2 orange shades could be actual stripes. I will be doing this yarn again for sure after I get in more of the On-Line next week. Some I will use for a trade and the rest I will keep. Of course I don't feel the pictures do this yarn justice. I am just going to have to invest in better lighting if I want these pictures to represent the real thing.

I am also progressing on the Aran Cardigan. I am finding that doing 2 sleeves at once on Magic Loop gets easier as you go along. I am above the elbow now with the sleeves and figure at this pace to be able to connect the sleeves to the body sometime during this next week. And then I might actually think to take current pictures. For some reason those sleeves have been camera shy and stay hidden in my knitting basket every time I get out the camera.

My DH has gotten completely over his vertigo issues and has progressed on to having a end of winter head cold. He doesn't seem to have caught a very bad case of it, having no real sore throat, head or body aches. But his runny nose is up to snuff!!!!OK bad pun but it fits. I am sure glad that he has plenty of time to get over this before his surgery in just 10 more days. And I am making him keep his distance cause I sure don't want to share even a mild cold with him.

DH also made a wild decision to at least look into moving to northern Alabama instead of southern Tennessee. The price of gas is so high that either he would pay a fortune for gas to drive to work or give up driving and retire(not my choice of options). The advantage of Tennessee was the retirement income tax breaks but Alabama is not that bad for taxes and the savings from not using so much gas should easily offset that. So now a whole new bunch of houses are available to look at and I am going to get started on that tonight. I think we are both getting antsy to make this move and now that the surgery looms so near, we can start gearing up again. And this makes a perfect place for me to make my exit for the week. So I will leave you with a pic of Lexi enjoying Audry II. Of course I was wanting to actually knit on her at that particular time. But you know kittens.......it is all about them!!

It's All about the Quilt

Happy Spring all you peeps!! So much is in bloom right now. The yellow dandelions& daffodils, the pink flowering Quince(above), the purple of hyacinths and the white of the dainty Snow Bells and the deep purple/red of the redbuds. If the wind wasn't blowing so freaking hard I might be able to get better pictures. But here in SW Oklahoma, spring means wind so I shoot with the fastest speed my camera will give me and hope for the best.



Although I have gotten my planned knitting done for the week I will not bore you with pics. OK OK, 1 more of Audry just cause I worked so hard to get the shot. I took her out to our local park to show her the prairie dogs. The huge red boulders just seemed like a nice place to show her off and document her current size. Again the wind was not our friend. Every time I would get her smoothed out and get in a good spot to snap the shutter, the wind would get her all riled up and I would miss my opportunity. But finally I managed to get in one or two that look great with the beautiful rocks as contrast. Problem is now Audry is demanding she get out even more and wants to go to the wildlife refuge next week to see if she can have her picture taken with some spring wildlife!!

As I intended, I got my sleeves going on my Aran Cardigan. Did some Googling, found a tutorial that made sense and got both sleeves going at once on magic loop. The best instructions I found were by a guy knitting his first pair of socks on ML. Boy Who Knits must speak my language cause I had no problem following his lead. But as soon as I had everything going on the needles I realized as soon as I started cabling I would have to shift stitches around cause my ml was dividing my cables right in half. So I had to take 1 sleeve back off for a bit. Redistribute the other a little and put the 1st one back on, again fixed to have the magic loop come out between the separate cables. Right now it is a little tight to knit but I think as soon as I start the increases it will be a bit easier. And this way there is no doubt that the sleeves will both be the same size with the decreases matching all the way. I just hope it is worth the extra effort it has taken to get it all set up. By next week I ought to be quite a bit further along and I will let you know then if I grow to like it or have ended up throwing it across the room.



But as my title promises......Knitting does not take center stage this week. On Thursday night, my birthday by the way, my BQF came down from OKC to eat dinner out with me and then go to Scrappies, our stitch group. She doesn't get to come down often cause of gas prices, health issues, weather, you know how it is. But it is not unheard of for her to come and I was just happy to get to see her. We went out to eat at our new Olive Garden and ended up with our meal being free. Of course that was because the food was almost inedible but Carol really tells that one better on her blog so I won't repeat. Then we went downtown to our stitch group meeting. Everyone acted surprised to see Carol and happy to see me there on time for once. We relaxed, compared projects since last meeting and did our usual very casual visiting. Then all of a sudden Carol hands me a bag with what I thought would be a birthday present, say a ball of sock yarn? But what I pulled out almost brought me to tears. The group had made me a quilt top as a farewell gift. Cause of course we were supposed to be moving right now. But it is such pretty piece with everybody signing their block and some posting lovely sentiments about friends and/or quilting. I plan on hand quilting it and even bought the backing fabric today. It is such a bright sunny, happy(as Carol Johnson would say) quilt that I am going to make sure it gets a focal spot in my new sewing room/studio so I can remember my awesome Lawton friends every time I look at it. And for once I don't mind posting a picture I am in. Look how skinny I am!!!! And it wasn't to bad of a hair day either.


This weekend I found out that there is still alot about medicine and illness that I do not know. Very early Sunday morning DH turned over in his sleep and practically laid on me. It woke me up and I asked him what in the heck did he think he was doing. He commented that he was not feeling very well at all. Well tell momma what is bothering you dear.. "I am dizzy, the room is spinning and I'm clammy and feel like throwing up." I assured him that he better get his behind back over on his side of the bed and he was probably coming down with a virus. He did move over and go back to sleep until morning. But when he got up his symptoms were worse and he started to get a little worried. I still thought virus but what do I know? So he goes and googles his symptoms and ends up thinking he has had a stroke. Not likely I state, but who am I anyway compared to the God of all knowledge-Google. But a few seconds later he stumbles and falls which does start to worry me. So he says maybe we should really go to the ER. I throw on some clothes but not fast enough. He starts heaving uncontrollably and he hasn't even had any breakfast. Finally we are both able to get out of the house and on the way to the ER. He doesn't think I am taking him serious enough cause after all-he is having a stroke.... Now don't get me wrong, I was worried but not about a stroke. I was thinking more like brain tumor.....much worse in my mind. When he gets there he manages to continue to show them how sick he is by non-stop dry heaving til they take him back to an exam room.. The very nice and very good doctor examined him, got labs drawn, IV started and CT ordered in no time at all. They dosed him up good with anti-nausea meds and he just went right off to sleep. When the doctor came back and told him that he had Benign Postural Vertigo and what that meant I could see the relief come over him instantly. Then he did look over at me and say-"OK you were right-no stroke!!"
So he ended up taking a lot of anti motion sickness medicine, doing some strange exercises and taking an extra day off work. But he is slowly recovering and hopefully it will be just a one time thing. But at least if it ever happens again he will know what it is and not fall victim to "Google" disorder!!


Hopefully this week will be calmer and I can get a few more things done. I got some more yarn skeined up to dye today and hopefully it can go in the dyepot tomorrow. I bought the backing for the friendship quilt and would like to get it peiced and maybe basted. I aim to have my aran sleeves up to the elbow and of course AudryII is still singing her siren's song every day. I hope all you readers who live a bit further north will start seeing some of the color I bragged about today, if not outside then maybe in some gorgeous new yarn... Maybe I should try to dye yarn that matches all the pretty spring colors that are in my backyard, hmmmmmm do I have enough base colors to make that happen? We will see and maybe show you next week...

No Pictures Please!

I thought I would pop in and do a quick blog update for the week. But alas if you were expecting any pics you will be disappointed. I have just not found anything great outdoors to snap, the cats have not been the least bit photogenic and none of my projects have changed enough to warrant being showcased on film. But it has been a good productive week. I got lots of knitting done, watched a few movies, got some great walking time in and last but not least, did a little more packing up.

I have not sat down and watched much on the tube for quite some time. I just get too bored and restless to sit there long enough to get thru anything with any substance. But DH has been downloading movies that have not even left the theater yet. I don't want to know how so that when he gets arrested and hauled off to prison I can claim complete innocence!! It is all on his computer after all-my laptop is completely legal!! But none the less, I did get to watch a great movie, a decent movie and one I did not care for at all. First the didn't care for-Atonement. The cinematography was excellent but it just moved to freaking slow......it probably would be a much better book but now that I have seen the movie why bother. Next would be the decent movie-Enchanted. It starts out as an animated fairy tale but quickly changes to real life characters that are completely out of place in modern New York City. It was not a deep life changing movie but light hearted and great family entertainment. But the movie I really liked was Juno. It is the story of a quirky teen who gets pregnant and has to handle the situation in her own unique way. It does not glorify teen pregnancy in any way but a younger less mature teen might not see that so it probably should be watched with adults in tow. But it was a great movie with eclectic music, lesser known actors and a heartwarming story. Highly recommended by me.

I really did have a good knitting week. I finally got the Aran sweater back on the needles with hopefully enough stitches to go around me comfortably. When I frogged it I was at about row 65(?) and now am back at row 43 so no need to take pics. It really looks just like it did when I took pictures before only a couple of inches more in diameter!! The afghan is still coming along nicely. But at this point another 40 sq's won't show up much in a picture so I won't keep boring everyone with them. I got some great new yarns this last week from a swap partner I matched up with on Ravelry. She sent 15 10g balls of yarn and none of them were things I had here at home. So I have been busy working those into the blankie. The blankie has had a name change tho. The other day while I was out walking I kept thinking I really would rather be home knitting on the afghan. And then a mental picture of the man eating plant in "Little Shop of Horrors" came to mind. And I could hear my afghan saying "FEED ME" "FEED ME". So I immediately had to go home and google the movie to find the name of that plant. So now my afghan has a new name "Audry II" So right now Audry II is on a strict diet of 5 squares a day. Then I knit on the sweater in the evening and if I get enough done I can go back and do 1 or 2 more sq's for Audry. Am I the only person who's knitting speaks to them?

And one more afghan related item. I have decided to buy some Knitpicks Bare yarn in the wool/nylon blend sock weight and a crazy amount of Acid dyes. I am going to play with dying some of my own colorways to use in Audry and trade with fellow blankie maniacs. And if I can handle the smaller amounts of yarn for that I may try and dye enough for some socks. Whats the worst that can happen? Some butt ugly socks I guess!! Well enought for one night and back to the knitting for me........