Lucky to be alive

OMG, my boys did the scariest thing this afternoon I hire students to babysit in the summer, and I have a favorite, we haven’t had her over for awhile, because we havent been going out much. I’m working today, and she was babysitting. The kids had their 8 year old friend come over, and they asked her if they could go to his house, he lives on the next block over, they told her he lived two doors down. They told the babysitter that I let them go, so, with no reason not to trust my 5 year old, she let them. Well first off, this was a lie, they know they are not to leave the yard, I had left this unsaid, as she is a regular sitter, and even if she wasnt sure, my boys have been taught not to lie.

This whole thing wouldn’t have been a big issue had they gone to their friend’s house, but they decided to cross the road, which isn’t just any road, it’s a highway. I am super upset with the boys, and stuck at work still, DH is dealing with them.

We were supposed to go to the lake tomorrow, but we’ll see now, I’m not sure I want to take them now. Here is the beautiful lake lot we will be at, if we go.

If you were watching someone elses kids, at what age would you trust them to tell the truth about whether their parents let them do something?

Tada!!

Tada!!

Here it is, in what glory baby girl would allow, as she would not let me put the top on her today, hopefully I can get some good modeling shots tomorrow morning. (She doesn’t like to change clothes mid day)

What do you think? I’m pretty proud of it, as well it’s the first thing I’ve made that has come completely out of my head. Certain elements came from knitting I’ve done recently, like the rolled edge, created by a slipping the second stitch on the WS rows, and hey I’ll admit the small cable on the straps, I saw that somewhere else too, the original inspiration came while I was working on this sun dress, I thought it would look cute with the racerback, then I had to create one, and the next thing I knew, it became a design on it’s own.

Now for the next step, getting it typed up, and the scary part, for me anyway, grading it. Which I have some experience in now, as I’ve been testing the pattern I wrote from my Oma’s notes, for this hat.

Until next time, everyone.

Fixing a mistake

So, I was getting really excited, only 12 rounds left, and the i-cord, and I would be done the second of four sample hats, until I got to the end of the round and discovered I had 4 extra stitches, no problem, I’ll drop back, and put in the missed decreases, but after dropping the first stitches, I discovered it wasn’t the last rounds where I had missed the decrease, it was earlier than that, after spending 15 minutes pouting, and debating, I started dropping back more rows, I will be using the second colour to tell me how many rows I’ve dropped down, before I find my list decrease spots. I know I found one within 4 rows of my main colour (8 total), and I think, it looks a mess I will need a clear head and good light if I want to fix this and avoid frogging.
I forgot to take pictures of the mess, before frogging, so here it is, after I’ve picked my stitches back up, but before I’ve tinked back far enough to actually start knitting again.

It doesn’t really look all that bad, but I have two rows alternating stitches on the needle, it’s a slip stitch pattern, so instead of slip – knit, I’m going slip – tink.

So just get all the stitches back on the needle, start knitting, replacing stitch markers as I go, to realize, that I had made a mistake on the increases, and I had the wrong number of stitches still. Off I go, pulling put the needles, frogging, and picking the stitches back up, and tinking some more, to get to the beginning of my second increase round. So I did manage a picture of it, off the needles.

Please pardon the darkness, it is late, and now that I finally have (I hope) the right stitch count, and everything appears to be on the needles properly, I am heading to bed.
Happy Sunday all, hope it goes smoothly.

Catching Up

I am playing catchup with my laundry, and other household chores, the joys of a day off. My biggest two challenges are laundry and Dishes, they never end, and there is more than one part, wash, dry, put away. With my laundry I am good with washing and drying, but things tend to pile up at the put away stage, I usually end up waiting until I have no baskets to fill with clean laundry, I have 6 or 7, I’ve lost count, I know things are getting out of control when I start using the dirty clothes hamper to store clean clothes today I was at that point, it was packed full, and I had nowhere to put the clothes in the drier. So the adventure begins, I decide to sort out the kids clothes that they’ve outgrown, there is only a handful of clothes in the dresser anyway, so that is what I spent one morning doing, and I was only half done. I still don’t have a basket to use, as one is full of baby girl’s clean folded clothes, waiting to go in her dresser once I pull out the ones that haven’t been worn recently, one is full of DH’s and my clothes I found mixed in with the kids clothes, and one is full of the clean clothes from the laundry hamper, two still had not been touched.

By bedtime on tuesday, this saga was as good as done, all that is left is a couple bags of hand me downs, and the sweaters. Wednesday, it was the dishes, it was supposed to be my last day off, and I did it, got them all washed, and only clean dishes out were in the dishwasher, but today, I had another school function for little guy, and I fell off the wagon, on top of that, an hour before I would normally drop the kids off with the babysitter, I was on Facebook, and saw a comment that her grandma had passed away, so I texted her, to make sure she would still babysit, and she said no, nice to get some warning, hey? So I ended up not having a sitter, and had to call into work, it will be interesting to see what kind of trouble I get into, I was clear, that my babysitter had cancelled last minute, and I couldn’t find anyone else, but yeah.
I also got a lot of knitting done this week, finished the first hat of my sample knit, and am half done the second, two and a half to go, wanna see? Of course you do. Or so I hope.

Felt really long near the end, but once I saw it blocking, so worth it, and it reinvigorated me to work on the rest.

Our First Field Trip

Yesterday was my first field trip as parent helper, first of many, I hope, there was a shocking parent turn out for this one, despite the fact that it cost us to go too, normally the parent helper price gets built into the student’s fee, but being it was kindergarten, and the teacher wasn’t going to turn parents down, it wasn’t, and we had to pay. Not a big deal, I was happy to do it. There were 18 parents, from two classes, so 20 adults total, I think there were 3 or 4 of us who just had our own kids, the rest had two each. It was a blast, despite over 3 hrs on the bus, the teachers are experienced enough with this trip, that they brought books for the kids, and the three of us without a second child had our iPhones to keep them occupied. We started off at the provincial museum, which I loved, I have a strange fondness for history museums. We saw all kinds of animals, and then did the rocks, and bugs, my son got bored at this point and wanted to go back to the animals, so I took him over to the aboriginal exhibit, for the last ten minutes before lunch.

He loved this one, for some reason, and had to look at it from both sides, our cat had brought home a rabbit that morning, which he found, and may have caused this fascination.

This is a colombian mammoth, I had a hard time getting it in frame.

After the museum we headed out through the city, and off back to the country, to the Jurassic forest, which is a big swampy forest, but they have walkways with nature information, and dinosaurs fully automated moving dinosaurs, and they taught us about them, did you know that they now believe that t-Rex had feathers.

This is their new dinosaur, they had just installed him on Sunday, and we were some of the first to see him, see feathers.
After the trails, the kids played at the playground, until the rest of the class was done, this is my favorite picture of the day. that is little guy jumping off a T Rex spine.

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Day 8 of 8

Yesterday was essentially day 8 of 8 at work, how many of you know that once you work a certain number of days on either side, it’s like you never had that one day off to start with?
I just finished my first set, after 5 days off, I’ll be back at it. Now I got the birthday cakes done, for the most part, I wanted to add blue sparkle sprinkles, but it was not to be, as we did not have any. So, here is what I came up with for the June birthday cakes. This is equivalent to 4 – 8″x13″ pans.

I’ve gotten pretty far on the first of the hats too, I’m done up to the decreases, so not very much left on this one.

And some craziness went on on Friday, an armored car employee shot and killed three coworkers, and injured another to rob the armored car, he is currently on the run, armed and dangerous, everyone is talking about him today.

Doesn’t look to scary, but quite bad.

They Trust Me?

I work at a Senior’s supportive housing lodge, for the last five months, I have been baking the birthday cakes for the monthly birthday party. This month will be my sixth set of birthday cakes, I have learned how to bake them, first from a mix, but I prefer scratch, and when left to my own devices, quickly made the shift. We have two lodges, which means two parties, and two big cakes, each month. I only have the most rudimentary of cake decorating skills, what one of my co workers was able to teach me (read pound through my thick skull) in two sessions, months apart, she is an artist, I bake. Baking is very straight forward, you take a set of detailed instructions, follow them, and if the instructions are right, and you managed to follow them properly, you get a delicious treat. Art is a different story, completely, you have a blank canvas, and maybe a picture in your mind of what you want to end up with, sometimes you just wing it, and if all goes well, and you have talent, or training, or both, you will come out on the other end with a nice picture.

Today I was informed that I will be decorating the birthday cakes on my own this month. I baked them tonight after supper, and I’ve gotten pretty good at creating the blank white canvas for decorating on, it’s the rest, with the colours, and flowers, and making it all pretty looking, that I’m not so confident about, so I will have cake pictures, and progress pictures on my knitting projects

Design in Progress

So I went for the design, from design dilemma, as anyone who has read most of my posts since then has probably figured out, and have come up with a workable pattern, I have knit it almost twice, with some minor changes planned for what is left of the second one, as the first came out to wide across the chest, hopefully this one works better. once I am done the sample, I will type it up, I promise.
Here is a picture, a rather sloppy, lopsided picture of the back of the shirt, but a picture nonetheless.

Also, the yarn for my first sample knit has arrived, it’s four hats, and here is a quick shot of the yarn, I have already cast on the first one, but really a picture of stitches on the needles is no more exciting than yarn, as that is all it is, not even the size of a swatch yet.

The downside of being in charge of the finances, and other things.

I love being in charge of the family money, it keeps my inner control freak at bay, besides that DH is even worse at it than I am. The other night though, I found the down side, DH has to ask me for permission to spend money, and of course if he needs to save for something, he needs to ask me to do it. So laying in bed the other night, he asks how much money we have in savings, well, I tell him, then ask why, he doesn’t say, just tells me he’s planning something, I ask him how much I need to save for it, and he tells me, so now I know from the hints he’s dropped he is planning a trip, that will cost 400-500 dollars, and is more than 6 weeks away.

I have had a few successes recently, including one rather silly one, while mopping the floor at work last night, I noticed one of the stains that has been there for much longer than I have is finally starting to fade, yay. Also, I have made the charts for my first ever knitting design on the computer, I have the excel file, and PDF file saved in my email, yahoo. Also, I have the whole pattern written up, I am knitting a sample, to make sure it all works, then, it will be off for editing, and test knitting. About a week before release I will put the pattern page on Ravelry, it will need to be connected to my profile, then, when I release it, there will be a FREE discount code good for a week posted here. And then 20% off posted for the rest of the month.
Here is a picture of my sample in progress, including my WWKIPD knitting.

Today is world wide knit in public day, and I have to work, once again, I have only been off once since I found out about it, and then I had a 10 month old, and no child care, so I have not made it to a single event for WWKIPD. Today I was hoping to leave early for work, and knit in front of the building, or in the library, until I had to go to work, but my husband had some running around to do, so alas, my knitting in public has been done, on my deck. Have a happy day.

Baby Talk

I have long since completely banned gibberish from my house, after catching my five year old talking baby talk to his 18 month old sister. I tell the boys that baby girl is just learning how to talk, and they need to be good examples for her. This saying has become a regular thing for me, because sometimes, it is something I wouldn’t have a problem with them doing, like jumping off a chair, or low step, but I wouldn’t want the baby to try. Both boys have not only accepted this explanation as to why they can’t do something, but embraced it, I’ve heard them tell their friends, and each other, to be a good example.

I have recently become bothered by one of the neighbor boys, he is 7/8 years old, and his speech is that of a two year old. His voice is the same as a normal boy, but he says ‘me want, me do,’ which are patterns my boys have not used for quite some time. Now, why it bothers me, my boys are 4&5, rather impressionable and lately have been picking up on it. I correct them by saying it properly, but it’s becoming more frequent, my boys have speech issues of their own, and don’t need another one, to slow down their progress. I don’t have any idea what to do to help all three boys with this, its got to be bad enough for that boy at school, I don’t want him to feel picked on here, my older son is a bit of a leader, so I also need to take that into consideration, this older boy does what my son wants, most of the time. His parents let him wander the trailer park till 9 every night, an hr after the younger kids have to go to bed, I don’t know how old any other children are, for him to play with, after 8. My babysitter complained to me the other day, that he came over at 730, and she knew that my kids wouldn’t be going to bed on time, at that point, which is, no excuse, my boys are good listeners, they may argue, but if rousing back down, they give up quickly.