Girls night in.

Happy Wednesday. I have no profound thoughts today. Granted, I pretty much never have any profound thoughts, at least that I share on here. I don't even have much to write about in general. G is out tonight with the boys, so it's me and Catie home alone. And she's in bed. So I guess it's just me. It's actually kind of nice. We cancelled our cable yesterday. So instead of sitting in front of the tube, I'm blogging, knitting, and listening to Cast On. Now I don't have to feel guilty about all the wasted hours I spend sitting in front of the television. But I do have some finished socks for y'all.


Vital Stats:
Pattern: Windowpane Socks, a pattern from my LYS
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill in Blueberry Hill
Needles: Addi Turbo circ, size 2
Started: March 3.
Finished: March 25.

Now it's off to finish Branching Out. I feel so productive!!

Fun's over. Back to Work.

Well, it's back to work now folks. Vacation was great. Now it's back to the grindstone. I survived call last night. Needless to say, however, my white cloud is white no more. After 4 call nights of no admissions, last night kicked my butt. Part of the job, though.

I'm knitting away on my Branching Out scarf and will hopefully be done with it within a couple of days. I need to do some more charity knitting for Lent as well. But here's a picture of the completed sweater--on its intended wearer. I've told him I don't care if it's 80 degrees outside...he's wearing the damn sweater!

I also finished my Windowpane socks, and will have pictures of those tomorrow. But to tide you over, here's little Miss Blue Eyes for you all to enjoy.

It's done. It's done. It's done.

Well, after 7 months of off and on knitting, G's sweater is finally done. I finished the second sleeve this afternoon. It's on the kitchen counter blocking as we speak. It's been an endurance project to say the least. I have this incredible urge just to jump up and down. By no means is it perfect. One sleeve came out longer than the other. This is a mystery to me, as they both have the same number of rounds and I don't think my gauge changed. But alas, there will always be things I don't understand. But what I DO understand is this puppy is done! Happy dance at my house tonight.

This isn't the best picture ever, but here we go:



Stats:

Pattern: Men's Neck Down Pullover (but with roller collar, hem, and cuffs) from Knitting Pure and Simple
Yarn: Lamb's Pride in Sandy Heather
Needles: Addi Turbos, size 9 circ

And on the upside, hopefully G can still wear it once or twice this year. We're headed to Helena Montana for the weekend and it's still cold there. We're such world travelers of late, are we not?

Good to be home

Well, Catie survived her first plane ride. Come to think of it, she had a lot of "firsts" this weekend. First plane ride, first rodeo, first concert, first museum, first time to Texas, first time to a yarn store. Okay, maybe not the yarn store part, but all the rest are true. We had a great weekend. The plane ride to Texas was a little hairy. She fussed most of the whole way there. Then not a minute after we landed she screamed, then passed out on my chest. Seriously. After a good lunch we hit a couple of yarn stores in Houston. Yarns 2 Ewe and Mary Charles Yarn Company. The rodeo and concert that night were a blast.

Saturday we went to Bayou Bend, a museum and garden. Gorgeous. I'm always amazed at places like these...places that were once upon a time someone's home. Could you imagine looking at this from your living room every day??

That's Michelle and Louis enjoying a little romantic moment.

From there it was off to Old Town Spring for the spring festival. What a cute place. Lots of little boutiques and shops, and then there were tons of artists' booths as well. And guess what? Two more yarn stores. Imagine that. The best one was Twisted Yarns. G and Louis were such sports about the whole thing. Saturday night we had Greek food, which I haven't had for a long time. Then it was home to sit and knit. While watching Bride and Prejudice. What a girl thing. It pretty much rocked. Here we are at dinner.

Sunday we sat a the local coffee shop and us girls did some more knitting while the boys did boy stuff. Computers and all that. Here they are.

G eventually took Catie for a walk in the stroller. I think she liked it. Whadya think?

Then we headed to the Natural History museum to see this. Amazing views of anatomy. I had a few flashbacks to first year of medical school. Ah, the memories. Sunday late afternoon and evening were spent on Michelle and Louis' patio knitting and visiting. To cap off the evening, Michelle has the first season of Lost on DVD. I haven't watched it at all up until now, but holy crap, we have a new show to watch and catch up on. Off to Netflix I go to look for the first season to add to the list.

Catie did much better on the plane ride home this morning. She still didn't sleep a whole lot, but was happier. Hence we were all much happier. And that pretty much sums up the weekend. It was a great time. Very relaxing and could've been longer, but still it's nice to come home and get back to our regular schedule.

I've been a bad blogger. Nothing really to write about in the Knitting on Call household. We're leaving for vacation tomorrow. We're off to Houston for a few days to visit Michelle and Louis. We'll be going to the Houston rodeo, checking out the area, hitting some yarn stores, and who knows what else. I'm excited to be going, and excited simply to get away for awhile. I haven't even really knitted much this week. I did some spinning, but I don't think I've picked up the needles since Sunday night. I'm hoping the vacation will boost my motivation some. I need some good knit vibes.

I realize I've been lax with the Catie pictures lately. I predict many pictures when we get back from Texas. Enjoy the weekend, and Happy St. Paddy's Day.

Just call me "Master J"

Tonight was a very big night. It was the first meeting of our new knitting group. It was at my house, so for once the table and kitchen are somewhat clean. So far it's a group of 4 of us from work. We're trying to come up with a name for our little club. Like the medical geeks that we are (sorry guys), we've decided we're going to have code names. So here we go... Veronica (a.k.a Scarf-Girl)

Then there's Sis (Awe-Some) in the front, and Erica (The Baby Hat Machine) in the back.


No pictures of me were taken, but I made the executive decision that I should be Master J. Really, I was just joking, I swear.

I just finished the first of the Windowpane socks. I started it last Friday or Saturday. 10 days for an adult sock is a personal best for me. It's so pretty, there's no chance for second-sock syndrome to kick in. I want to wear these puppies. Now already.


And here's another look--

I also today bought some Lion Brand cotton yarn. I've been wanting to learn to knit Continental, so I thought I'd work on discloths for Ann and practice a new technique at the same time.

That's the knitting news, folks. 4 days until vacation. We leave Friday morning for Houston to visit friends.

Warning! Messy house below!

One more day of hospital duty. I've had a light week, so can't complain too much, though today left a little to be desired, on many levels. I delivered a baby. Unfortunately, labor was induced by the local method of methamphetamines. The baby's fine, but it's frustrating to see this happen over and over. It's quite an issue here.

I did get some knitting done on my down time. The gusset decreases are done, and I'm onto straight knitting in the foot. I'm getting faster at socks, which is nice. Maybe I can actually get a pair done in a month, instead of one individual sock each month. I'm working on it. I'm avoiding G's sweater tonight. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a better outlook on life and will be more into it. It's all about the attitude. And tonight I've got nothing but bad attitude.

And now for something totally and completely non-knitting related:

There's something wrong here. I can't quite figure it out. Well, besides the messy counter/kitchen. Let me think...Oh, wait. The dog is on the flippin counter!! G had left out some marinara sauce to cool a bit. Needless to say, the sauce is no more. I don't even like cats on the counter, but a dog?? What the hell? It's G's dog, that's all I have to say. Mine is much more well behaved. In all actuality, she'd probably eaten what was on the floor, and had taken off to hide outside. Does anyone else have issues like this, or are our dogs just freaks?

Brief update below

For anyone who is wondering, the second sleeve of G's sweater is progressing along. The finish line is in sight. I've decided I'm going to do a couple of inches a night. I've been working on it while listening to podcasts. As of tonight, I've now made my way through all the Cast-On episodes. I love Brenda Dayne's voice. Now I'm on to Pointy Sticks. I'm enjoying just listening and knitting. I've been doing this a couple of hours a night, and I think I'm getting more knitting done. I'm also working on the gusset decreases of my sock. I trade off on the 2 projects.

On the fiber front, I'm waiting for an order of roving from Crown Mountain Farms. We're getting our lambs in a couple of months. The kicker thing is that a friend of G's mom has offered to sell us a couple of alpacas. 2 white alpacas for $1000 total. Whadya all think? Tempting, to say the least, but we don't really have that much acreage. I would really like to buy more land, but it's getting incredibly expensive here.

That's all for today. Tomorrow I'll get some pictures of the sock and sweater on here.

And the Oscar goes to...

The title doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm going to write, but seeing as how the Academy Awards were on tonight, I thought it'd be appropriate. We did watch though, and I worked on the latest sock. And I hope I didn't offend anyone with my little string of cursing a couple of days ago. Sorry.

This is my hospital week. My group has 10 family docs that take turns doing a week of hospital duty. So this is my week. It's been slow so far, though I had a rough couple of hours yesterday. I'm not going to go into details, but one really sick patient and 2 admits kept me on my toes for awhile. Today was much better, and I actually managed to get my desk a little bit more cleared off, as well as some knitting.

Yesterday I started this baby hat, and I finished it this morning. It's the Umbilical Hat from SnB, without the umbilicus/I-cord. I made the same hat for both Catie and Danny. It's quick and easy. The yarn is Plymouth Encore, very bright and soft. I'm sending it on to Ann for Lenten knitting.

Also Friday night I started a new sock. It's Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn in a pattern written by Jan, sock guru at the LYS. All the socks I've been knitting lately are Cherry Tree Hill. Even though I have many other skeins of STR, Trekking XXL, etc sitting here waiting patiently. They can wait another week or two. Here's the newest sock OTN.

My goal for the week is to try and get those WIP meters along the side. That and maybe try and come up with a photo album for both WIPs and FOs. Well, and both of those and to do our taxes too.

I was afraid this would happen

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. That was one of my favorite words when I was kid, by the way. Anyway, I've finished the increases on G's second toe up sock. I'm ready to start the short row heel thing-y that I'm still kind of freaked out by. Here's what we have so far


Here comes the problem though. Pictured below is sock #2. Note the very small pile of yarn next to the sock. No where near enough to finish the sock. Argh!


So I guess that means a trip to the LYS tomorrow to try and find a second skein. Damn.

As an aside, when I was little, we lived on a ranch with an irrigation dam in the creek. I couldn't figure out why you couldn't say "damn," but you could go to the dam. I also didn't understand why my dad was so much older than me, when my birthday was Aug 9, and his was August 12. Just a little embarrassing stuff so you can get to know me better.

So hopefully I can find another skein tomorrow, because I really want to finish this sock.

Tonight is another call night. So far so good. Well, except for the sock stuff. But otherwise, it's been a great night. Plus I've gotten another person into knitting. Now both Erica AND Veronica are getting into knitting. I'm so proud. Brings tears to my eyes.