Adventures in Bento: November 10-14, 2014 November 17, 2014

This week is a little skimpy on lunches. There were a lot of other life things that happened that kept me from being able to make lunches everyday. However, I did get a few, so you can at least see those. 🙂

We’d had hotdogs for dinner over the weekend and there were two leftover, so I went ahead and pan fried those in the morning for lunch. They have a kitty fork for easy eating and there’s ketchup in the little container next to the hot dogs. On the other side of the top tier, I added some pretzel sticks and a Babybel cheese. On the bottom tier there are some pear chunks and applesauce with sprinkles.

If I recollect correctly, they had school lunch for both Tuesday and Wednesday. However, I was able to cobble together something for Thursday. It’s not really a lunch I’m proud of, being mostly leftover pizza, but it’s probably still better than school lunch for a third day in a row. 🙂 On the top tier I put a slew of raspberries and blackberries, as we as a few graham crackers and some citrus gum drops for a treat.

Friday I did a bit better with a panda and wee gingerbread man PB&J. There was also the last of the blackberries, a few pretzel sticks, some mini chocolate covered pretzels, and applesauce with some cinnamon.

This week I’m hoping to accomplish two things, one is to make a lunch for the girls every day, and two is to make sure to get the blog for this week’s lunches posted on time on Friday. Let’s see how I do. 🙂

FO: Star Crossed Slouchy Beret March 29, 2011

Another thing that I discovered at the end of 2009 was the ISO/Destash group on Ravelry. I was able to take advantage of some great destashes and find some truly awesome people to trade with. A perfect example of both was with two skeins of Mal worsted. I found some in pink for a great price in a destash. And, since I hadn’t tried that particular yarn before and had heard great things about it, I went ahead and bought it. Of course, i should have remembered that I’m not a fan of pink. And when the yarn came, it was *really* pink.

So, I put it out there that I was looking to trade my two skeins of pink for 2 skeins in a different color. And, luckily, I found a taker.

And, of course, I had to knit that beauty up super quick. So, a new hat was born.

Pattern: Star Crossed Slouchy Beret (Rav Me!)
Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted in Verdes
Date Started: January 16, 2010
Date Completed: January 18, 2010
Mods: None

FO: Twisted Flower Socks

Last January brought with it two things: My true love for Cookie A patterns, and my discovery of knitting for yarn. Both discoveries came about with these socks. I was trolling Ravelry, as I tend to do and I saw someone was offering a skein of sock yarn in return for sock knitting services.

And, I fell in love with the arrangement. You’ll see, once I get all my FO’s posted, that I’ve been doing a lot of knitting for yarn over the past year or so. :o)

But back to the one that started it all. I can’t really recall if she picked out the pattern or I did, but it’s an awesome one. As I stated earlier, it was the pattern that helped me discover my true love with Cookie A. I had made 2 other of Cookie’s patterns before and had enjoyed them, but this one blew my mind. I mean, twisted stitches and single stitch cables. I was in heaven. ;o)

And, yum. The Jitterbug was nice and plush and the color was fantastic. Just about the perfect purple. My only complaint about this yarn was that the skein was a little light on yardage. But, as you may know, they have changed their put up since I made these and the new put up is more generous.

Pattern: Twisted Flower by Cookie A. (Rav Me!)
Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in Velvet Plum
Date Started: December 31, 2009
Date Completed: January 13, 2010
Mods: Because of the low yardage, I went ahead and only did one pattern repeat on the leg. I personally think the socks look better that way, too. :o)

FO: Boyfriend Socks February 26, 2011

Last Winter, Ron started bothering me for a pair of socks. I blew it off, thinking that he wouldn’t actually ever wear the socks I made for him. But then I brought home a ridiculous looking pair of old, missfitting acrylic socks that were leftover from when my old LYS closed. He wore those socks to death, and they didn’t even fit him. So, I broke down and agreed to make him a pair.

Of course, Ron wasn’t going to let me knit him anything bright and fanciful, so I found a few skeins of Claudia Handpainted in my stash and set to work.

They weren’t hard at all, and you all know how much I love me some cables. But, even I was was ready for these socks to be done. Ron’s got big, wide feet,a nd he wanted them on the tall side. And, looking back, I realize it probably wasnt’ a good pairing of yarn and pattern. The cables kind of disappear in the yarn. Ah well, he worn them to death last Winter and pulled them out as soon as it got cold again. And that’s what really matters, right? :o)

Pattern: Boyfriend Socks (Rav Me!)
Yarn: Claudia Hanpainted in Leopard. (I used 2.5 skeins)
Needles: US 1
Date Started: December 26, 2009
Date Completed: January 9, 2010
Mods: Um, it was unitentional, but I didn’t always count the cable row well and so, they’re not really all the same. :o)

FO: Meret

One of the last real splurges I made before Ron lost his job was get a skein of Zitron Opus 1 from my LYS.

They had this perfect colorway and I just had to have it to maky myself a hat. Needless to say, the skein didn’t sit in my stash for long. :o)

I love this hat, and I still wear it at least one day a week. Every color in it is the perfect color for me. I loved the colorway so much, I got it in their new sock yarn line too. :o) I’m thinking it needs to be a Sockhead hat, but I’ve not decided for sure yet.

And, I love the fact that, avter over a year of serious wear, this hat still looks really good. There’s a little fading, and it’s not as pristine as in the picture, but Istill get a compliment on it almost everytime I wear it. I must remember to make another one day. :o)

Pattern: Meret (Rav Me!)Yarn: Zitron Opus 1 in colorway 200
Needles: US size 7
Date Started: December 23, 2009
Date Completed: December 25, 2009
Mods: None that I can recall.

Long Time, No See…

Wow, it’s been over a year?! How did that happen? Well, I know what happened, Life. That’s what happened.

But, I’m going to try to renew my blogging habits and maybe I can catch everything up. The next several blogs entries will be FO posts. I like the idea that I have a post for each FO I’ve done since I started the blog, up until I disappeared, of course. I’d like to continue that and, since I still knit a lot even if I wasn’t blogging, I have several FOs to post. I’m not sure it really matters, though, as I’m sure any regular readers I had are gone. :o)

Well, if there are still some of you out there, I will do a little catch up entry here.

My MIL is still in the convelescent hospital. She never did recover from the overdose of her blood thiner. Her short term memory is shot and we have to take everything she says with a grain of salt, because, very probably, it never happened. The upside is that she’s a much nicer and happier person. She smiles often and laughs a lot. And she loves the girls. And that’s wonderful.

Speaking of the girls, T is a mighty 6 year old kindergartener, and D is 3 and talking up a storm. They’ve both been rather sick lately, D ended up with Whooping cough, but they are my angels and I love them.

Ron’s plant closed last March. It was a scary time. He was out of work for 6 months when he very fortunately got a call from one of his old bosses asking him to return to work for the same company, but in a different plant. He’s been there since October. It’s been nice to have a steady paycheck and medical insurance again. It was rough with D’s condition not having insurance. Thankfully, we have wonderful doctors who insisted they see her with no charge and we were able to get her medicine for free directly from the phamacutical company.

As a result of Ron being out of work for so long, we are losing out house. I was proactive and called our bank before his plant closed, but, even though I was on the phone with them every month until October, and jumped through every hoop they asked me to, they decided to lie and cheat and steal and now we’re in foreclosure. We’re trying to short sale and have an offer that we’re just waitng for the bank to decide if they’ll accept it. We were really upset at first, but the fact of the matter is, we’ve lived her in this cruddy box for 10 years and only enjoyed it for the first 3 or so when we were both working and could put the money into fixing it. Ever since I got pregnant with T, live got harder and we couldn’t afford to make the repairs and improvements we wanted to. And, as a result, the house has gotten worse and worse. We can’t even invite friends over because it’s so embarrassing. So, we’ll rent and, when something breaks, we’ll call teh landlord and he’ll have to fix it. We’ll probably have less space, but it’s worth it.

So, that’s about it. It’s been a rough, scary year, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And, as we always knew He would, God has delivered us through every hardship and provided what we needed. He is good!

FO: Christmas Socks January 5, 2010

My mom likes cute socks. She likes to have socks that match her top and socks that are season appropriate. So when I saw the pattern for the Christmas Socks on Ravelry I thought I’d found the perfect knit for her.

Here’s the problem, though, the pattern isn’t a pattern per se, it’s a chart for the stranded panel that goes on the cuff of the socks. No problem, I though to myself, I’ve knit plenty of socks and can figure out the foot for myself. And I did. The foot of each of these socks is perfect. While the others who’d made the socks on Ravelry did them top down, I chose to do toe up so I could get the boring bit out of the way. I figured it would work just as well if I turned the chart upside down. And it did.

I even had the perfect yarn in my stash. This had a Wintery quality to it.

See, it looks like it’s snow and ice, right?

So, I did the foot on a US1, but knew I was going to have to go up to do the chart. This is where not having a proper pattern or enough stranded experience messed me up. The chart was 60 stitches, the other projects on Ravelry all did their’s on a 2 or a 3, so I tried the chart on a 2. I got about halfway up, tried it on and it was painfully obvious it wouldn’t fit. So, I ripped and then tried it on a 3. This time I did the whole chart before trying it on. That was really stupid because it also didn’t fit. I could get it on with a lot of tugging, but the stitches looked sloppy and I really wasn’t happy about it at all.

That’s when the sock got put in time out.

I had to then decide which of the following 3 things I was gonna do.

1. Frog the whole thing and come up with another gift for Mom.
2. Rewrite the chart to add 12 stitches or so and re knit it on a 2
3. Go up to sport weight yarn and a size 5 needle

I went over these options in my head for weeks. The first one would probably have been the best choice, looking back, but I really thought these were the perfect gift. The second option seemed like it would be more annoying than the third, even though it would be cheaper. But, I went ahead and ordered some sport yarn from Knit Picks and started anew on size 5 needles.

And it’s ok…

They look like socks and they fit, but I don’t like the obvious transition from the fingering to the sport weight.

They’re just not the perfect Christmas sokcs I’d had in mind.

Project: Christmas Socks by Anne Abrahamsen (Rav Me!)
Yarn: Schoeller+Stahl Fortissima Colori Socka Color 104, Sandnes Garn Peer Gynt color 8764, Knit Picks Merino Style in Hollyberry, Dusk, and Vanilla
Needles: US 1 and 5
Date Started: November 12 2009
Date Completed: December 24, 2009
Notes. I want everyone to understand that my dissapointment with these socks has nothing to do with the chart. This is completely a user error situation.

FO: Dreams Of Spring Hat I

With my hair now really short, I’m noticing two things. 1, my head gets cold now and 2, when I wake up, my hair’s all over the place. So I figure I need several cute hats to keep my head warm and cover up a bad case of bed head in case I oversleep or just don’t feel like doing my hair in the morning.

I’ve already made myself one hat, and had to put knitting for myself on hold for a while while I finished up Christmas gifts. But, I did manage to work a few rows now and again on this:

I was all excited about this hat. It’s a beautiful stranded pattern and I saw so many versions of it on Ravalry, and my LYS had the perfect yarn on sale! Where could I go wrong?

Several places, apparently.

First off, while I thought the two colors were contrasting enough, I have found they aren’t. They are very complimentary and look good together, but you can’t hardly make out the picture. And what’s the point of fair isle if you can’t see the picture?

Also, what I didn’t take into consideration is the fact that a skull cap, no matter how adorable on others, isn’t really my style. Maybe it would work if I was 10 years younger and lived in an area that got snow. But, being 32 in SoCal, yeah, not so much. So, I’m loaning it to my LYS for a bit and then I think I might gift it to my young cousin in North Carolina.

Project: Dreams of Spring Hat I by Jeanne Stevenson (Rav Me!) 

Yarn: Louet Gems Bulky in Sage and Ginger
Needles: US 7
Date Started: November 16 2009
Date Completed: December 21 2009
Notes: Again, I took so long because I’d only do a row or two here and there and I think that’s one of the reasons I’m dissapointed in it. Normally, a hat only takes a day or two, so if it stinks, then you’ve only put a few days worth of work into it. Essentially. I waited a full month for this hat and so my expectaions were higher. (Kind of like when you hear all these people rave about a movie for weeks and then, when you go see it, you’re a little dissapointed). Also, I wrapped every stitch on this hat to see if that would make a big difference in my stranded knitting. I found that it was a bunch more work and time for just a very little pay off. At least the way I was doing it. I’m planning to do a yolk stranded cardigan soon and so I’m thinking I’ll try the philosopher’s wool method. I hear a lot of good things about it.

FO: Glynis

A friend asked me if I would teach her how to knit socks toe up in exchange for Cookie A’s new book, Sock Innovation. I told her, “Of course.”

So, I have this new book and I’ve seen on Ravelry that several people are planning to knit the whole book. Since I like pretty much all the patterns in the book, I figured that’d be a good goal for me too, especially since the first one would be perfect for my Aunt Kathy for Christmas.

You see, Aunt Kathy has teeny tiny feet. She wears a 4.5 shoe. But she likes her socks high, so I needed to find a pattern with a rather high cuff, but one that would be easy enough to alter to fit a small foot. Enter Glynis.

(Sorry, I only have the one picture. I couldn’t very well try them on and Aunt Kathy hasn’t sent me a picture of her wearing them yet.) (hint, hint, Aunt Kathy)

Project: Glynis by Cookie A. (Rav Me!)
Yarn: Knit Picks Gloss in Burgundy
Needles: US1
Date Started: October 22 2009
Date Completed: December 7 2009
Notes: It took me so long because I took a break between the first and second sock to knit other gifts. Also, you nmay have noticed that I didn’t knit the pattern on the foot. I did that because I wasnt’ sure how well she’d like it in her shoe. I figured I ought to get her sold on hand knit socks first, then incorporate patterned feet.

FO: Ribby Slipper Socks

So, my MIL is back in the hospital.

Yay.

You might recall that back in mid September she had an anuerism burst in her brain. She had emergency surgery to repair the bleed and then, after only 5 weeks recovery, she became a miracle patient and was able to go home by herself to take care of herself. And she was doing really well, or so we thought.

The week before Thanksgiving I went to pick her up for a doctor’s appointment. When I got there, I noticed that she seemed really confused and had some issues with her left hand. It didn’t take long for me to decide that she needed to go to ER. When there, they did a CAT scan and saw that her brain was bleeding a little bit. Apparently, she’d taken too much of her blood thiner and it’d caused her brain to have tiny bleeds. It wasn’t so terrible to kill her as long as she got medical attention immediately. So they gave her plasma to “thicken up” her blood and planned to have her admitted for a few days. Not too big of a deal, but Ron and I were going to have to monitor her medications from now on, right?  This was a Thursday.

Friday all hell broke loose. Apparently, she had a second anuerism in her brain that the doctors didn’t see the first time. Well, the blood in her brain from the blood thiners caused her to have siezures and those caused the second anuerism to burst. All of a sudden she was completely lost and beligerant. They had to restrain and then sedate her because she swore she was at work and needed to get something out of her desk. She was seeing people from work outside her room and they were coming and talking to her. And, the worst part is that it took several days before they found out it was a second aneurism that had done this.

Now, a burst brain aneurism is a really dangerous thing. 50% of people who have them don’t even live long enough to make it to the hospital. Of those that do make it, only 50% survive in the hospital. Sierra has now beaten these odds twice. And here’s the hard part. They can’t do surgery to repair the second aneurism because she’s too weak and won’t survive. But, because of the plasma they gave her, the aneurism has clotted and is not actively bleeding. Don’t know how long that clot will stay there, though, and, if it starts to bleed again, she’ goes back to having a 50% chance of making it to a proper hospital. How many times do you think she’ll beat the odds? It’s a twisted game of Russian roulet, I tell you. But, the doctors say she’s got better chances with the clot then she does with the surgery at least for now. They’ll be re-evaluating her on the 14th to see if she’s strong enough for surgery then.

She’s in a convelescent hospital now and she does seem a little better everytime I see her. Physically better, that is. Mentally? Well, mentally she’s just about as crazy as you get. She talks regualarly with her mother, who’s been dead for 2 years, and she’s having all sorts of other hallucinations. And, even though she can’t walk without major assistance, she keeps trying to get out of bed and her wheelchair, resulting in her falling on her face. This has happened 4 or 5 times now and they’ve had to resort to tying her restraints in the back because she was untying them.

So, needless to say, we need more prayer. And I know I can count on you all for that.

But, the whole reason I bring that up is to explain her Christmas gift. You see, she’s a jewelry person, especially beads and stones and silver. So I had originally planned to make her a knitted beaded bracelet. However, right now she needs that like she needs a hole in the head, (Ha!) so I thought about what I could make that was quick, easy and was something she could use.

I came up with slipper socks.

Project: Ribby Slipper Socks by Cathy Carron (Rav Me!)
Yarn: Louet Gems Bulky in Lilac
Needles: US 8 and 11
Date Started: December 13 2009
Date Completed: December 17 2009
Notes: I held the yarn doubled for the foot and then single for the ankle. Each slipper took a day to complete. They were really really easy and, if they weren’t so ugly, I’d say a great last minuted gift. However, they can’t be comfy to walk in and they are pretty ugly, so I don’t think I’ll be making them again. I’d rather just make regular socks on big needles. However, for my MIL, these are perfect.