The Gamble Life

Baby presents & old college memories

I finished a little baby vest today that is a present for a new baby.  Here's a peek (don't want to give it all away until it's delivered), and my picture of the day, number 80 (I've got all the others taken, I just need to put them up here, and at the 365project...).

Back in college I was on the rowing team and at our big end-of-the-year race (which was more of a tournament) the rowers from different schools would trade shirts.  The men would actually give their racing jersey to the winning squad...so at the end of the year if you were fast you had a collection of racing jerseys from all the teams you'd beaten.  The women's squad didn't do this, instead we (and almost all the other schools squads too) printed up t-shirts at the end of every year and then rowers would buy as many as they wanted and trade them with rowers from other schools.

I wore all of these for workouts in college and when college was over I didn't want to get rid of them.  I didn't want to wear them out.  Really, I wanted to keep them somehow, but I wasn't sure exactly what to do with them.  I had the idea of making a quilt out of them and spent a couple of years coming up with ever more elaborate designs (making the shape of a Y for Yale out of the shirts, that kind of thing) and carting them around with me from move to move.  Eventually I decided I would do some kind of quilt for our guest bedroom.  Well, we don't have a guest bedroom, and really, wouldn't that be kind of embarrassing?  Then, last summer we bought our awesome hammock on vacation.  Gus and I discovered that the hammock is a lot more comfortable with some blanket between the ropes and your flesh, so last night I FINALLY just did it.  Threw the t-shirts and some fleece together and didn't worry about it being clever or perfect or anything.  Just fun and DONE. 

The sewing is definitely wonky in places and I don't care at all.  It's finally finished, I can use and enjoy the shirts again and the next time we move I won't feel guilty about carting around a box of t-shirts from college and fleece I bought way back in 1997. 

Some of my favorite shirts:  a painted sweatshirt my mom made for me, a clever cartoon from a Boston University shirt (I think), and my year, my crew!

 

Any hey, go comment on Toy Truck!

Toy Truck (Giveaway) -- Closed

Way back last year I told you I was going to have a giveaway, and finally, here I am!  All Modern Baby gave me two of these toy dump trucks (I picked them out), one for me and one for YOU (or one of you, anyway).

I am sure we all remember some of our favorite toys...when I think about my favorites I always think of the same two.  A fabric bodied baby doll with plastic head, hands, and feet (Whose hands and feet were chewed off by a horrible dog we had!  I kind of hated that dog.), who had eyelids that closed when you laid her down.  I really loved that doll and gave her the very original name of "baby."  I also had a wooden horse that pulled a wagon which had a clown on a bar and the clown flipped over and over again (thanks to a rubber band pulley system attached to the wheels) when you pushed the toy across the floor.  I loved that toy too.

I wonder what toys my kids will look back on as their favorites?

I don't know if this little dump truck will become one of Abe's enduring favorites, but he does quite enjoy it right now.  And maybe one of your little ones will like it too!

I was very impressed with the packaging too--plastic packing tape, of course, but inside, nothing!  Not even crumpled paper, which I thought was great and finally reasonable, because really, if this truck can't handle a few jostles inside a cardboard box it isn't going to make it through life in my house with my kids!

Abe really likes being able to use the bar on the truck as a handle and likes to carry it with him when we go places.

If you'd like to win this truck for your kid or yourself, leave me a comment on this post and tell me about one of your favorite childhood toys!  (Forgot to say:  I'll take comments for a week, then pick a winner through some random process.)

Easter Bunny

Finished up Abe's Easter Bunny...I think it came out so cute.  This pattern is from Itty Bitty Toys, a very sweet book of toys to knit.  I have plans for several more.  I've started on Chris' March socks and when those are finished I need to knit Gus' angler fish and several baby presents.  Fun!

Do you think Abe will love that little face?  And orange ears!

I couldn't resist making his tail a little orange too.

This bunny is knit in pieces and sewn together (you can see where I didn't do such a good job sewing on the one leg), which is kind of annoying but I think probably makes the finished toy a lot stronger.  Such cute proportions--I really like how he came out.

Road Trip!

So our friends (the Duke basketball fanatics) happened to have two extra tickets to Saturday's ACC Tournament and offered them to us!  We enthusiastically said yes, packed ourselves up in a hurry, and hit the road to Greensboro.  We had such a wonderful day!  Chris and Gus went to the games while Abe and I went to the Greensboro Children's Museum, which was a very nice museum.  I think Abe really enjoyed the market.

He ran right over and climbed into the train, and sat down with this little girl who seemed a bit nonplussed by the uninvited visitor to her tea party.  I think Abe went over there because he was thirsty and thought she really had something to drink because after a couple of minutes he brought a teapot and teacup from the table over to where I was sitting and gave them to me to pour him a drink.

There was also a special Hot Wheels race track set up by some true Hot Wheels enthusiasts and collectors.  These guys were also giving all the kids several cars; Abe chose five (!) to bring home and share with Gus and I think they would have let him take even more.

Living as I do, in a hobby glass house, what with my 90,000+ yards of yarn, fabric I purchased almost twenty years ago and hundreds and hundreds of dollars spent on paper for my wedding, I will not be disparaging these collectors hobby at all.  But I absolutely have to share that these guys told me they owned upwards of 30,000 Hot Wheels cars!  All in their original packaging of course!  In fact, that is why they had so many to give away.  Apparently Hot Wheels knows its collecting audience and offers several times a year very special collectors cars that cannot be purchased but instead can only be acquired by mailing in the cardboard backing from 20 cars.  So these guys go buy 20 Hot Wheels cars, open the packaging to get the special car, and then donate all the opened cars to the club to give to kids at special events like this one.

But the absolute highlight of the museum for my little mailman fan was the absolutely real-life mail truck!  When I pointed it out to Abe his eyes lit up, his arms stretched out, and his little feet started moving him right across the room.  He was so excited!

We ate lunch at some locally loved and famous hot dog stand that I thought was gross, but my guys loved.  We ate dinner at a very nice and tasty restaurant that obviously preferred adult customers but tolerated us nonetheless.  Chris and Gus got to watch a very exciting and close Duke game and have that cool experience of going to the tournament.  Oh, and I looked through the windows at a very nice yarn shop, but didn't go in or buy anything!  Yay Maya!

It was a wonderful day, impromptu and fabulous!  The cherry on top, for me, was that on the drive there I finished my Sock Madness IV socks, and using my iPhone (which I love even more now) I took a picture, uploaded the picture to flickr, sent an email, and got officially recorded as finishing.  Also, even though my entire first day of knitting on these socks was a waste because of various technical issues, I still finished them only four days after the pattern was released and I was in the top 20 finishers!

Here's that iPhone picture, plus me wearing them earlier today:

53-56:365

53

Taken on my phone; on our trip back from Austin.

54

55

My first miss.  I spent the day holding an inconsolable Abe.  He had an ear infection and I couldn't get a doctor's appointment until 3:30 in the afternoon.  By the time I remembered I needed to take a picture I really didn't have the energy to care!

56:  A shawl I just finished and absolutely crazy love.

A True Durham Experience

Friends of ours gave us such a great gift last week:  they took us to the Duke-UNC game (last game of the season; senior night) at Cameron!  This is the game that Duke undergrads camp out for MONTHS for to get tickets to!  Months, seriously, in the winter.  In tents.  I would so not do that.

It did not disappoint.  The crowds were LOUD and enthusiastic and charged up.  It was so much fun.  My absolute favorite part was that every time a Duke player made a free throw the entire crowd would yell "whoosh!"  I loved it.

I didn't take my camera, so here are some pictures I took with my phone.

You can see how close together all the seats are and how close to the floor all the seats are as well.  The students get the best seats, the bleachers surrounding the court which just brings the energy up even higher.  It helps that a lot of them had been camping, were now drunk, and, I'm sure, were so happy to be able to sleep in a bed that night! 

Going to a Duke basketball game was on our list of things we absolutely wanted to do while we lived in Durham, and we got to go not just to a Duke game, but basically THE Duke game.  It was great--one of those experiences that are so special and you'll just remember it forever for having gotten to do it.  I hope Duke never changes its stadium, keeps it small and intimate even if they can't sell expensive box seat tickets or expensive floor seat tickets.  I hope they remember that this is a college team and the main people there should be college students.  I hope they remember that smaller, in this case, is definitely better.

Easter

The beginning of Abe's easter bunny...I'm not knitting Gus a matching one.  He already has a plush easter bunny plus the one I made for him last year.  And he'll appreciate something else more; I'm just not sure what.  I have lots of toy patterns...snakes, elephants, oh, I just remembered that he wanted me to knit him an angler fish!  I should try to do that.  Turns out knitting toys can be really fun.  Parts are definitely fiddly (like stuffing little legs) and you do have to knit tightly to keep the stuffing in, so it can make your hands tired, but things come out so cute and the projects are small and therefore fast.  Colors can be as traditional or as wild as you want (I'm thinking maybe orange ear liners for this bunny...thoughts?).

I know this bunny is going to get grungy pretty quickly if Abe likes him.  And I didn't even pick a washable yarn.  This yarn is lovely though--a discontinued wool and silk blend.  Yum.

52:365

My cousin Sofia and her new husband Derek.  It was a beautiful wedding.  Abe and I flew to Austin for a crazy 40 hour visit so I could go to the wedding.  Gus and Chris had a fun boys' weekend in Durham with bowling, eating out, and general "mom's not here" kind of stuff.

I have, that I know of, eleven cousins and Sofia is the one I am closest to.  She's 10 or 11 years younger than I am and way cooler, but I always have a good time when we hang out.  Derek seems wonderful, and certainly he showed excellent taste in choosing a wife!  During the vows he said "in richer, and in most likely poorer" -- how can you not like that?

Puddles

 

Don't you wish puddles still made you this happy? 

Kitchener FTW!

I am so proud of myself!  I've been knitting a pair of socks for Chris, a very nice pattern by the way, available free, here, and was overly confident about the fit.  The upshot is that I made the foot a full inch and a half too long!  These socks are knit from the toe up so this is not easily correctable without ripping out all of the leg and I was not about to do that.

So I decided to remove the toe (!), rip back the foot (!), and re-attach the toe (!)!!!

First I put the cuff stitches on yarn so I wouldn't have to worry about them falling off needles and I could easily turn the sock inside out whenever I needed to.

Then I separated the toe.  This could be done with any sock, but was obviously easier because this sock uses a different yarn for the toe & heel, making the separation very clear.

Then to rip out the extra inch and a half of foot.  This was more difficult that normal because knitting actually only unravels backwards from how it was knit.  These socks were knit from the toe up so wouldn't unravel from the toe.  So I picked a spot one row short of 1.5" and snipped one little leg of one little stitch and began unraveling down, toward the toe from there.

I then unraveled that last row stitch by stitch so that I could make sure all the stitches were seated correctly on the needles.

Then I *just* kitchenered the toe and the foot back together.  Here are an inside sock of the new toe seam, and two outside shots.  You really have to examine it to see that I did all this.  It took about two hours which is a long time, but far less time than re-knitting the whole sock would have been!

Kitchener stitch is one of those things in knitting that seems really hard and confusing until you get it and then you wonder why anyone is scared of it.  I'm pretty proud of this fix.  The socks fit perfectly now.