Now that's better!

Here is my baby booga bag after ripping it out (yes, the whole thing!) and starting from the outside of the second skein. The color progression looks a lot more natural, and I am quite pleased with how it looks. I am now knitting the I-cord. I will wait and see how much yarn I need for the I-cord before I bind of the top of the bag. As it is, it is a few rows short. I would rather the bag be a little short than having too-short handles. I really like that the handles are felted separately then attached so I have more control over their length.

I finally got on the ball to make a present for my friend's daughter that just turned... I think it's 10. The sad thing is that K's birthday was a month ago! I'm sorry! I procrastinated and waited until I could get this book from the library so I could base this little purse off of the gift bag pattern inside. I also wanted to use two colors of yarn, do you recognize the purple stripe? Does it even look purple in the picture? Well, it's supposed to be. Sorry about that!! Here are before and after pictures, with a play scissors-thing from the kids' medical kit for reference.

Nearly every time I knit now, the girl-child always wants to play with my needles and yarn. She wants to wrap the yarn around the needle, or (most of the time) just stabs the yarn with the needle. I've tried several times to convince her the yarn and needles are mine! and that she really doesn't believe me either when I tell her that I really don't need help!

So... these are for her.

The cheapest pink acrylic yarn I could find (Caron's Simply Soft, which is my favorite acrylic), and some blue size 8 Red Heart Starters knitting needles. (Yay for AC Moore and 40% off coupons!!) Hopefully this will get her out of my way a little. Hubby wanted to know if I was going to teach her how to knit. Dear, she's only 4 1/2! I told him that when she started watching what my hands were doing rather than just playing with the yarn and needles, I would start trying to teach her. I am hoping this doesn't happen before she's 7.

Here is a present for meeeee!!! Two skeins of Lorna's Laces in the Happy Valley colorway, and a mini Kacha-Kacha. My LYS sells out of this yarn really fast, so I was hoping that there would still be some left, a week after the store owner called me to let me know it was in. (Isn't she nice??) I am still somewhere around the heels on my current socks (doing two at once on dpn's, toe up), so these will be stashed. I swore I wasn't going to stash yarn. Well... here it starts!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I really do knit

I must apologize for the lack of knitting content thus far. Here is one of my many current knitting projects:

A baby booga bag in Noro Kureyon colorway 170. I have heard a lot about Kureyon and it's little quirks of having knots in the middle of the skein joining two colors that are not, let's say, part of the natural color progression of the skein. Case in point. I started with the bottom of the bag. So, going from left to right, I found a single knot in my first skein where the second burgundy stripe starts. And that's all for that skein. Begin skein number two--I knew that skein two was different, I just hoped that skein one had hidden in its center the same colors as skein two. Do you see where skein two starts? Isn't it glaringly obvious? I was hoping it would look all right, but it looks like I started with a totally different colorway. As far as I can tell, it progressed from a rust color to orange to yellow, to a dark olive green, to navy, then to to the burgundy.

I am 4/5 of the way finished with the bag. It's time for some damage control. Yep. Rippit! I think I am going to start the bag over, going from the outside of skein two in. This should put the orange stripe somewhere closer to the middle of the bag so it won't stand out as much. Hopefully I will be able to get a little bit more of a natural looking progression. Unfortunately, I don't really know what's supposed to be on the other side of the orange since it only occurs once in my second skein. I will then add part of skein one on, and probably use the rest of skein one for the handles. I guess we'll all have to wait and see what happens!

Who are the People in your Neighborhood?

In an effort to both use up some of their boundless energy and kill some time between dinnertime and bedtime, I have been taking the kiddies for a walk around the neighborhood the past few evenings. Little did I know, it was a really introspective experience. We have lived in our current neighborhood for nearly 5 years (moved in just before the girl-child was born) and, I am sorry to say, we have been rather reclusive. I have chatted a little with one of my neighbors, but probably because she makes the effort. There are two or three neighbors on my little cul-de-sac street that I have never seen or talked to aside from waving when we drive by.

In the past three evenings, we have canvassed probably three-quarters of our neighborhood, and I have seen many things I have never seen before--even though I have probably driven by zillions of times. Down a side street (where I know I haven't driven by), an older woman weeds her beautiful garden. I have seen her out two of the last three evenings. Her little garden is gorgeous and she says "Wait until it blooms!" There are some homes that have beautiful landscaping, one with a little outdoor fountain, one with little flower-boxes that sit on the deck railings. Off another side street, I discovered a beautiful view of a little slope looking down on the nearby forest.

Some of the homes are a little more run-down. On the street with the beautiful view, a home there had a broken window and holes in the skirting (we live in a manufactured home community.) I wondered if the resident did not have enough money to fix these problems or simply did not care. I wondered about the people in all of these homes. People that I have lived nearby for so many years (for me, living in one place for five years is quite a long time!) yet have never even seen or talked to. I feel kind of small and lonely, yet hopeful. I wonder who else I will meet as my children and I continue to explore.

When I was a child, my family rarely interacted with their neighbors. I wonder why that was. Did my mom and dad grow up that way? Is it handed down generation to generation? It's not unfriendliness- maybe it's just being solitary. Doing your own thing, living your own little world and not looking outside of it. I hear stories from my husband and my mother-in-law how the neighhborhood kids were always in and out of their house all day long, and they often had other kids over for dinner. I would like to live that way. I would like to know my neighbor's name, the names of their kids, to feel comfortable enough to run over and borrow a cup of sugar or an egg if needed.