A quickie

I'm not at KnitNight tonight, sadly. Pete's been crook as a dog this week (we're talking 'I need a young priest and an old priest' sick here), and so I've stayed home tonight so he hasn't been left at home to deal with both kids whilst sick.

I am, however, knitting a hat. Why, when I've got both a scarf and a sweater on the needles, I don't know - I'd just been looking at the Yarn Harlot's pattern for her 'Unoriginal Hat' for quite some time and wondered if the chunky yarn I had stashed would work. So, on pulling the yarn out last weekend and swatching, I decided I might as well start it and hopefully finish it within a week.

I'm pretty sure my gauge is okay. I kept thinking I was well off and knitting a tiny hat, but I 'think' (read: hope) that it'll fit me:
Whew, time to get the ol' eyebrows done, eh?I'm not so great at taking photos of myself. I'm pretty happy with the the cables, too! Actually, after finding reasonable success with the cables I've attempted on squares of Lola-Frog's blanket, I've been quite keen on continuing to practice cables. That's probably why I'd been watching this hat pattern, almost willing myself to have a crack at it... I should be finished in a day or two, hopefully, and if it's successful, I'm going to try swatching the same pattern with a smaller gauge yarn and needles in an attempt to make the same hat but smaller, for Lola-Frog. She doesn't have a knitted hat of her own yet.

I'm still cracking on with WonderBoy's Weasley Sweater, up to the intarsia now. I decided not to put the 'H' on the front, I've charted an 'X' instead. I gave WonderBoy the choice between 'A' for his proper first name, Alexander, or 'X' for his shortened name, Xander. I like getting his input for his garments - he even chose the blue yarn on the Bendigo Woollen Mills website!

Well, back into it. Maybe I'll get the rest of the second set of repeats done on this hat tonight!

Mental Knitting

Or, "Learning to Remember Regular Dental Check-Ups"

I've come back from a long appointment with my dentist this afternoon, having complete the second stage of Root Canal Treatment on one of my molars (plus an extra little filling). Now, don't get me wrong, I am totally and completely aware of the fact that my presence at the dentist's this afternoon is my fault. Completely my fault. The sad truth is that I just haven't been going to the dentist for regular check-ups since I finished orthodontic treatment. And that was quite some time ago.

I have always been quite proud of myself having never had, in my twenty-eight-and-a-bit years on this planet, a single filling in my teeth. In the last year or so, when I had been feeling the odd twinge here and there, each time thinking 'I must make an appointment with the dentist'.

Correct, but waaaaaaay too late.

But I digress. I'm actually not blogging to discuss how the appointment went, how noisy the drills and other instruments were, or even how many local anaesthetic jabs I required (that'd be four, though). It occurred to me as I lay there, that I was thinking a range of rather interesting and somewhat oddly disconnected thoughts. I do enjoy the concept of metacognition ("knowing about knowing", or "Thinking about thinking"). These disjointed cogitations led to me pondering the possibility of gathering said thoughts to create a new blog post.

I think strange things. Things link inexplicably to other things, and I wend away on these fabulously meandering thoughts until I stop and look back at where I've come from, and realise that quite frankly, I think up some weird stuff.

I listened to the music on the radio (ABC Radio National); classical music which is mostly quite soothing to have on in a dental surgery. I heard them play first the Peer Gynt Suite, then followed by... The William Tell Overture. Hmmm, an interesting contrast there. But, it did keep my mind occupied as the dentist got on with it.

I did some mental knitting. Literally. I had completed a few rows of my Noro Striped Scarf as I was waiting to go in, and so I did a few mental rows in my mind, watching the yarn and needles as they went in, round, through and off. A good mantra.

I practiced my Calmbreathing (thankyou, Peter Jackson!), especially while anaesthetic was being administered - very effective, and this led me to reminiscing about WonderBoy and Lola-Frogs' births. Good times.

I heard the radio click over to the news at four o'clock and heard an announcement about the Reserve Bank declaring that Australia had already gone into recession, never mind what the Prime Minister has been saying. Also, that the Prime Minister was planning another economic stimulus package. At this point I gave an interested grunting-type noise, intended to say, 'Oh how interesting. I do hope he slings us another cool grand. I shall use it to pay this dental bill'. Not sure if the dentist picked up on this in the grunting.

I looked around a lot. I noticed that the dental nurse was wearing a Pandora charm bracelet and thought about how I'd like one, too. I thought about which sorts of charms I'd like to get. A ladybeetle for WonderBoy, and a little froggie for Lola-Frog, to start with. Maybe initials as well? Hmmm.

I looked at my dentist's eyes and saw that they are almost the same shade of blue as my husband's. I wondered what had made him decide to be a dentist, and thought about a character on one of my favourite British sitcoms, "As Time Goes By", a dentist who comments, 'Odd things to peer about in, mouths'. I wondered just how gross my dry scaly tongue must be looking by now, and thought somewhat reassuringly, 'at least I remembered to brush my teeth before I came in today'.

I do have to give my dentist a big plug, though. He's very gentle and explains everything he's going to do throughout the whole procedure, often apologising for noises and other possible uncomfortable situations as he goes. If you've gotta have someone drilling into your head, Dr Fisher is the guy to do it.

Always with the questions

I have been a parent now for three years, one month and fourteen days.

I had talked myself into believing whilst I was pregnant with WonderBoy that, being an Early Childhood teacher would put me in reasonable stead, parenting-wise. I had fairly confident ideas about guiding and modelling positive behaviour, about feeding them good food, making the most of teachable moments (ie. counting how many duckies he's lined up together, rather than just saying, 'ooh that's nice. Quack, quack'), reading at least three books a day (thank you Mem Fox - a literary genius.), and things like making sure they're always kept warm etc.

Until recently, I felt I was able to keep to these ideas (ideals?) fairly faithfully. They were serving me, Pete and our family quite well. People both in our extended family and in the wider community would comment on WonderBoy's delightful manners and happy, engaging nature. Don't get me wrong, they still do. He's brilliant at behaving in public, which is as my Mum says, the place where you want the best behaviour.

Things are changing. Not in a bad way, of course - the arrival of Lola-Frog was a huge but positive change, as was starting Preschool. But along with this change has come a shift in understanding, relationships, behaviour and power. All my training and experience tells me to go slowly and tread carefully to ensure that precious little self-esteems don't get squashed, that everyone feels empowered in each situation and that we all learn something out of each confrontation.... no, not confrontation... discussion?

Yeah, well. It turns out this isn't The Brady Bunch here. We're flying by the seat of our brown trousers, and it doesn't seems to matter what we do, I usually end up feeling guilty for yelling or being sarcastic when I know I shouldn't. Honestly, I can see and hear myself saying these things and screaming in my head, 'What ARE you doing??'. Feeling guilty for not playing one-on-one enough. Guilty for spending too much time playing and the house is filthy. Guilty for spending too much time playing and not encouraging him to learn to play on his own. Guilty for bailing out and putting the TV on all morning... not to iron, to knit, or read.

And now that Lola-Frog is here, there's guilt about not spending the same kind of time going for walks and playing with or talking to her. She seems to placed quite conveniently in a safe place to kick and wiggle while I deal with the latest WonderBoy thing, or while I get washing sorted or something and next thing I know she's back to bed again. *sigh*

What freaks me out is that all parents are in these positions as well! No one knows the answer, and we've all been having babies since time immemorial. Is it a time thing, where the answers are always changing and so don't apply to me, just as how my answers won't apply to my children when it's their turn? Or is it an individual thing, where all our answers are totally different?

Probably both, and it's exceedingly frustrating.

Pete keeps saying to me, "We're doing our best, and it's no more than anyone can ask of us". I know this is true, and still can't help but feel lacking... inadequate. Maybe this is an evolutionary trick to keep us trying our best so we won't eat our offspring. If so, it's working. WonderBoy will wake up soon, and come to me in the family room, arms outspread and say, "Hi, Mummy!" like I haven't seen him in days, even though he was taken forcibly to bed in a monster tantrum only a couple of hours ago.

I could learn a lot from his truly unconditional love and his ability to forgive and just get on with it.Love you, WonderBoy and Lola-Frog.

Publicity Knit

Another great evening out with the KnitNight crew. Here's a shot of at least half of us, knitting away for a photo to be sent in to a local glossy magazine. They're going to write a piece on us (cheers to Barb, who set this all up, consistently proving to us, 'It's not what you know, it's who Barb knows'!) to give us some publicity heading up to the World Wide Knit In Public Day for 2009.The rest of us were in photos on Barb's camera... We missed you, Dianne, Becca, Clare and Prue!

I managed to cast on for WonderBoy's Weasley Sweater, employing some maths inspired by Elizabeth Zimmermann's techniques to ensure a good fit...

After knitting the gauge swatch, I liked the tension that the needles gave the fabric (I'm using Bendigo Woollen Mills 'Rustic' 12ply in "Delta"), but the gauge was out by a couple of stitches per inch. So instead of fiddling with needle sizes, I worked out how many stitches I needed to cast on to get the same width, and off I went... feeling pretty proud of myself, but not proud enough to taunt the Knitting Fates. I'll keep measuring on WonderBoy as I go, with my fingers crossed!

Speaking of WonderBoy, he helped me to set out the sweater for photos of where I'm at right now... I think Captain Feathersword and the squeaking crocodile really set it off, don't you?
Ta daaaaa!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter, and was able to spend time with friends and family.

Blanket squares a go-go

The squares for April are finally completed, happily giving me enough time to have a crack at starting the Weasley sweater for WonderBoy before I need to even think about squares for May. I'm still going on with the Noro Striped scarf, it's great for KnitNight, as I can knit and chat without risking too many mistakes.

And here they are, for one month only!This one is called Cables and Bobbles, and I'm quite pleased with it. I knit it in the dark green as the design made me think of Lilies of the Valley. My aim, when I get to the end of this blanket, is to have at least one solid-colour square in each of the colours in the blanket. Mostly, this will be in a textured stitch pattern or cables - if I can stomach them again...

As mentioned earlier, I tried to do another cabled square this month (I had some idea about getting to the end of the year and having a cabled square, a striped square and an intarsia square for each month, but I think I'll be out of ideas re: cables by then. 'Go with the flow' is working for me right now.

So after I frogged both attempts at cables, I knit a nice, basic rainbow striped square:Ahhhh. Calm thoughts, calm thoughts. It just makes me breathe deeply when I see this square and remember how much cable stress it alleviated!

And the third for this month: Australia. Lola-Frog joined us on quite an auspicious day this year; Australia Day. Great for her party - everyone will know it's on the public holiday every year!I feel quite pleased with myself regarding this one. I couldn't find a pattern for a square with a map of Australia on it that I liked - either the square was the wrong size, or the map itself was the wrong shape or size. So I printed out some knitters' graph paper, courtesy of this website, printed a map of Australia from Google Images, and charted my own. I suppose I could say this is my first crack at designing! Yay me. Only thing I would have changed is the direction with which I was knitting when I changed colours from the orange back to the purple, but eh, who cares? Not me, especially when I was finishing it off at 1am last Wednesday (Thursday, I suppose it was!)

And now, back into it. I could cast on a gauge swatch for WonderBoy's Weasley Sweater, but I actually do feel that there is housework I should be getting on with (weird, isn't it?)

AAARRGGHHH!

I actively dislike cables today.

I have knit and frogged and knit and refrogged the second April square for Lola-Frog's 2009 blanket, and I have had it up to *here* (imagine my hand up round the top of my head!) with cables.

Damn it, if I'd known both attempts were heading to the frogpond, I would have done something useful instead... like clean the bathroom!

I'm forever knitting bobbles...

I've started a "Cables and Bobbles" square for the first of three April squares of Lola-Frog's 2009 blanket, and I'm quite enjoying it, really - I've never knit a bobble before, and I feel quite pleased with myself whenever one turns out okay.

I read an article in one of the knitting magazines Mum lent me a few days ago (and I can't for the life of me remember which one or where!!), where someone (who?) says that one should always stop to admire one's knitting often as you go, to make sure you're still enamoured with the project, also to remind yourself just how fabulously talented you are. I like this advice. I like to look down every few rows and marvel at the patterns emerging from the underside of the needle, like a document sliding from a printer... it just appears, as if by magic! But photos of the squares will be here when they're all completed and blocked. It gives me something to aim for.

However, there are photos of the Raspberry Clapotis! Sadly, the weather round these parts has been fantastic for crops, gardens and ducks; less so for outdoors knitting photography. So in the name of expediency, we shall make do with a chair near the window...... and one, just to show the rows of dropped stitches. I still can't believe how long it took to drop a stitch and have it ladder down a row in this yarn - I really had to work at each and every drop to get them to let go! Still, I think it's worked out very prettily, and I'm quite pleased with it. I think I shall wear it tonight to Knit Night.

Here's the Noro Striped Scarf, in its' infancy. I LOVE knitting this scarf, and it's just emerging so naturally and organically - I almost don't need to concentrate too hard now on the 1x1 rib, my hands have got used to working the stitches in this pattern. When Lola-Frog is having a lie and a kick on her mat, I sit next to her to knock off a few more rows while I'm chatting to her, and she's just... transfixed! She watches my hands so intently as I'm knitting this one, I'm beginning to think she'll be picking up her own needles before long!