I thought these blocks would take a lot longer to complete, but I knocked them out in just a few days.

Yellow:

Orange:

Pink:

Green:

Blue:

Purple:

I've cut the sashing for them, and I'll start putting it together tonight. I need to go buy the backing and the batting for it since I'll probably be quilting it by the end of the week. I'm loving how the colors are bright and happy. This will be perfect for Sarah's room! The only change that I'm going to make is that I'm not going to put the extra blocks into the back of the quilt; I think I'll use them as artwork in her room. I'll have them matted and framed, and I'll hang them above her bed.  I'll also have to make her curtains and a pillow or two, but that's why I bought double the fabric. I'm thinking string blocks for the two pillows. 

On top of that, I have been knitting:

That is a feather and fan scarf made with some of the SAFF yarn that I picked up last year. It had two random knots and a large section of unspun yarn which I cut out and had to spit splice together. On one hand, yeeeech, and on the other hand, it totally worked. The yarn is very thick/thin so I didn't want to use it for socks. Still, it was calling to me, and I think this shows off the yarn to the best advantage. wouldn't that be a great color for a cardigan? I need to investigate getting a bunch of this in DK for a sweater….

We moved. We left our first house and crammed the contents into one storage unit and one apartment; surprisingly, the smaller space in the apartment doesn't feel as small as I thought it would. The kids are sharing a bedroom, which they find utterly hilarious because HEY! We can SEE EACH OTHER from our BEDS, holy crap this is AWESOME until 10:30 at night when mommy is considering resorting to baby Benedryl because she has put us back into bed for the seventybillionth time and is about to cry. It took Bryan a month to figure out that he could get out of his toddler bed when we transitioned him; it took Sarah about seven minutes to figure that same thing out.

The move itself went well, aside from the giant bruise that came from only God knows where:

I discovered that little baby when I went to take a shower after Day 1 of THE BIG MOVE. I honestly have no clue what caused that kind of damage to my leg; you think I'd remember getting hit hard enough to leave that kind of a bruise.

Since I also managed to finish my class load (A in English, B in Accounting II) AND we moved, I treated myself to some fabric for the stash.

These were both eBay purchases. I am your typical stasher; I buy this stuff in a frenzy, when I'm all caught up in how pretty it is, but I don't ever have a specific project in mind for it. I do the same thing with yarn. I rarely go into buying craft supplies with any specific use in mind, which is why I'm about to be buried under a mound of wool. I'm determined to use these fabrics up before the summer is up, though. I think this is going to quickly become the Summer of the Quilt.

Take one woman, work her to death and then let her stumble across a great online quilt along. Said woman will then obsess over the great quilts that are in the Flickr! group associated with the quilt along, and start plotting the quilt that she wants to make. She might even steal some inspiration from one of the quilts included in the quilt-along, and shamelessly copy the color scheme.

I never claimed to be original. Just crafty.

I ventured out with my two year old in tow today to the local Joann's to scope out fabric choices. This is the equivalent of stabbing yourself in the face repeatedly with a spoon while trying to retile your floors; the two things just don't go well together. The liberal application of a sheet of stickers calmed her down enough so that we could get down to business. We are moving Sarah into her toddler bed next week when we move into the apartment, and while she will be able to use the bedding she already has, we are going to need something new for the house. This quilt along looks to be the perfect excuse to throw together something bright and girly for Little Miss Thing. So after a few minutes of sticker-induced bliss, we had already snagged some SUPER BRIGHT SOLIDS.

Exhibit A:

HI! I DON'T KNOW IF YOU CAN STILL HEAR ME OVER HOW LOUD THESE COLORS ARE.

Solids chosen, the real fun began: picking out the coordinating patterns. I wanted something still very bright and happy, but I wanted tone on tone fabrics. I like what I have chosen, but I do reserve the right to change any of them at any time based on my whims.

And then again, all together:

I will return later and get sashing and all of that, and I bought twice the amount of fabric required for the project because I will need to make curtains and pillows to coordinate; overall, I'm very happy with what I've got. I'll probably use white sashing and get more of the pink for backing/binding. That is all way in the future, though, because I still have to work my way through an Accounting test and moving into our apartment before I can even start on this thing. 

SO. EXCITED. TO. QUILT.

MUST. ABSTAIN.

So, how's that shawl coming along?

It's good! I mean, I know it was getting a little long, but I really want to use all of the yarn. See? Here's a picture.

Whoa! What the…don't you think it's long enough? I mean, at some point, you have to stop! Put down the yarn! BACK AWAY!

Yeah, maybe you're right. 

Maybe?

All right! I'm finishing this repeat and I'll kitchner in the other end. I didn't think there would be any harm…

You're scared of kitchnering that many stitches. 

Not scared, exactly…

Chicken. 

What?

You heard me. 

Uh, okay. Didn't realize this was going to turn all third grade. 

How many times did you knock over that cup of beads while you were knitting?

Twice. 

*crickets*

Okay! Eight times! EIGHT TIMES! Is that better? 

Anyway, how are the kids?

Doing great! I mean, don't you see the joy on their faces?

Not really.

Seriously. They are doing great. That is just ONE picture, I've got tons more where they are totally jazzed.

I see. Let's move on…are you going to be doing anything crafty anytime soon, or are you just going to continue to bore us with pictures of your kids and blahblahblah house junk?

I've been busy! School, work, house - 

Yeah, we know. I wasn't asking for justification, Captain Defensive. Just if you were going to, oh, I don't know, get more INTERESTING any time soon.

Yeah, I'm going to start a quilt for my daughter's room. I'm just dithering over the color scheme. I'm going to start it when we get into the apartment and school is over, so give me two weeks. 

We'll see. You'll update? With pictures?

I promise!

That remains to be seen.

This site would have been updated waaay before now.

The past month has been full of activity: new job, new house on contract, picking out crap for the new house, getting sick, working out details on selling old house, finding apartment, getting insurance in case we burn down new apartment (seriously, we are required to have renters' insurance; it's a good idea anyway, but I've never been required to have it before), yada yada yada. My stress levels are UP TO HERE :gestures to neck region: and I haven't had time to knit. Well, I've had some time to knit, but not enough time.

The design options we chose for the house are AWESOME, if I do say so myself.

The lot is being scraped and leveled today, and there are rumors that our foundation will be poured next week. And in two weeks, we move out of our tiny little house and into a tinier apartment for four months while we wait for the house to be built. School will be over for the year, as I am not taking any more classes until the spring semester, so the summer will be spent constantly checking on the progress of our new home. And driving the builder crazy. Here's hoping that we don't drive him to peeing in our foundation before the concrete hardens (not that, you know, we're that bad. Ahem.).

Believe it or not, there has been progress on this shawl.

This is approximately 19 of the 31 repeats done, although I will be doing as many repeats as I can get out of this yarn because I do not want to waste one spare inch of it. The pattern is extremely easy to memorize, so most of the time the pattern stays in my knitting basket. What I am NOT looking forward to is kitchnering all of the stitches across this shawl; the bottom border is stitched to it like closing the toe on a sock, and I manage to screw THAT up enough that it should be very, very interesting to complete the same maneuver on something like 100+ stitches. Of lace. Maybe I should just give up while I'm ahead. I did manage to finish a sock:

Only one, though, so don't get too excited. I haven't even cast on for the second sock. I'm loving the colors, and there is something about the red toe that just delights my little sock knitting heart. They are totally obnoxious and loud, and they will be put away to be used as my Christmas socks. I try to knit a pair of socks for myself for Christmas morning every year. I obviously got a jump on it this year, since it is only Spring (as is evidenced by my AWESOME PLANT THAT I NURSED BACK TO LIFE AFTER ALMOST KILLING IT).

I'm just a leeetle bit proud of that damn plant. I bought it, transferred it to that pot, and it promptly lost all of its flowers. Since I absolutely suck at plants, I figured that I had killed it, but I kept tending to it anyway, and it absolutely exploded into flowers last week. I will take it with us to the apartment that we'll be living in to decorate whatever patio we have, and then hopefully it will make it long enough to get transferred into our new home sometime later in the year. This gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, I can keep other plants alive, too. I've managed thus far with kids; plants shouldn't be all that much harder, right?

The house, it has a contract on it.

It all happened so fast – people came to look at it, then they came back with her fiancee, then they came back AGAIN, then the offer, we accepted, inspection was great, and now…we wait. The couple that are purchasing the house are getting married in the next two months, so they asked to put off closing until the beginning of June. I'm totally cool with that (although, I have to admit, it does make me a little nervous that they might back out or something because they have two months to think about what they are doing) and we are currently researching temporary housing. Why temporary? Well, because we didn't expect this house to go so quickly, we hadn't even started the process of building a new one. We will be getting on that ball this weekend, which also coincides with our 6th anniversary. 

We are absolutely relieved and excited and nervous about a new house and ready to move on. This house was our first house together; we were married while we lived in this house, we brought our babies home here, I learned to knit here (and so started a lifelong obsession). It is a little bittersweet to be leaving it behind, but we're really ready to have more space for our family. And for my yarn. 

Here in Texas, you don't wear a lot of sweaters. Knitwear is kinda thin on the ground here; my love of the hobby is looked at with a raised eyebrow most of the time, because seriously, how many sweaters do you need in a city that really only has four days of freezing weather? But occasionally, I'll stumble across a pattern that I love, and I just have to make it, heat be damned. I think, though, that this takes it over the edge. I've cast on for the Apres Surf Hoodie, which is a lacy sweater in fingering weight yarn knit on US 3 needles.

(For those of you not up on knitting lingo, that's like trying to build your house out of toothpicks. It would take forever.)

I have the perfect yarn (the pattern calls for Cashcotton, but I have cashsoft, which is the same yardage just swapping wool for the cotton content), I have the pattern, I have the needles, but I have apparently lost my mind and decided that this is a good idea. I like the fact that it uses a relatively thinner yarn and that there is some lace on the pattern, making it less warm that some of the worsted weight sweaters that I've made, but again, I live in Texas. Thank God that we are as active with the A/C as we are, because otherwise most of this stuff would never get worn. I am doing some modifications to the pattern, though; I'm not making the hoodie, and I'm shortening the sleeves to 3/4 sleeves, since I end up shoving the sleeves up anyway. And I want to add some length to the body, so I'll have to figure that out, too. I'm not all that great at making modifications to existing patterns, but I'm determined to make it fit the way I need it to, so that will take a little a little extra effort on my part.

On the house front, we're still on the market, getting 1-2 showings in a week. Spring is starting to peek through, and we're hoping that will drive people out to find their perfect starter home so that we can get this one sold.  But for right now, we're still in a holding pattern. I'm trying not to think about it all that much; I know it will sell at some point, but I'm very impatient when it comes to this type of thing. Send good house selling karma this way, if you please!

Being that I am in love with geekery these days, I did a Wurdle for this blog:(enclicken to embiggen)

As my husband pointed out, I apparently talk about yarn a lot.

This year, instead of candy and flowers on Valentine's day, my only request is that I be released from picking up the house for one morning to attend a party. Not just any party, of course: this was a Ravelry party at The Knitting Nest, complete with Jess, Casey and Mary-Heather. And I may have forced them to take pictures with my child.

Luckily, they seemed okay with me thrusting Sarah into their faces, and the kid herself happens to be a camera ham, so it all worked out well. Note that Sarah is clutching her very own Ravelry pin, which she demanded the second she saw everyone else getting one.

So, yeah. I had a great Valentine's Day. What did you do?