Keep On Keepin' On

Despite the fact that I am coming off a four-day weekend and only had to deal with a three-day work week, it has been a very long week. The Mister has been away since Saturday morning for work, so I've been solo parenting since then. Every time he has to travel, I gain even more respect for single parents and how they manage to do it all. The Mister will be back late tonight, and there's a holiday weekend coming up, so I expect I will recover rather quickly.

But you came here for the knitting, didn't you? There has been some, though not as much as I would like. I have been working on Rainbow's socks during my lunch break, and I'm quickly approaching the end of the first sock. I'm trying to use up as much yarn as possible without playing another game of yarn chicken, and I think I will likely start the ribbing soon.

I am using the Fish Lips Kiss Heel for these -- my first time using it since the first pair I made with it -- and I think I may have messed up the template a bit, as the foot of the sock is turning out a bit big, but that actually works out for the better, as I was planning on putting in a bit of extra room so she won't outgrow this pair as quickly. She likely won't be wearing them anywhere but around the house, so a bit of extra fabric shouldn't bother her.

I've been working on my Wonder Woman Wrap most nights after I've gotten her to sleep, and it's finally started to get interesting now that I've added in the contrast color.

The pattern is very clever and quite simple once you see how it works, and I'm enjoying it a lot. I have a feeling a second one is in my future, as a certain kid in the house is planning to dress up as Wonder Woman for Halloween and has requested her own shawl. Fortunately, the pattern has been updated and now includes directions for a child size, so all that remains is to rummage through the stash and find some appropriate yarn.

Speaking of the stash, I am happy to report that it is finally back home! After living in a basement closet for months while we were working on a renovation project on our third floor, I finally got around to moving it back upstairs to the "stash room" on Monday (it also served as my workout for the day -- it's not so easy to move all that yarn and fiber up three flights of stairs!). I have to work up the energy to dig into it and organize it a bit better, but that should happen soon.

Rainbow and I also got a little crafty earlier this week. We went to Michaels on Monday to pick up some jump rings and beads, and then on Tuesday afternoon, following her first (half) day of school, we made some stitch markers.

The clay ones might look familiar; we did a bunch of them for the stitch marker swap at SSK earlier this summer. But I thought they might work better as progress keepers because they're so long, so I made a bunch of plain jump rings with seed beads (my favorite type of marker) to go with them. I still have to glaze the clay and add the lobster clasps, but very soon we'll have some swanky stitch marker sets!