Sheila's T

I finished Sheila's T last night. I know that it is large, but I wanted to make sure she would get some wear out of it after I spent so much time knitting it. I really liked this pattern. Since it goes down to a size two, I think I will make Emily one also.

Baby Kisses

How time flies. From no kisses as a baby, just a receiver of kisses, to sloppy open mouth kisses, now Emily gives kisses with her mouth shut. Still just as sweet, just not as juicy.

Literacy test

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

(you should probably copy and paste this into your own note and do it. if you want. :) )

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
1b) put an "x-" next to the ones you've started but not finished.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X +
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte BronteX-
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X +
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X-
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X-
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X+
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x+
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens *
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis *
34 Emma - Jane Austen*
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen*
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis *
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Gar
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins*
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X+
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens *
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X-
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X-
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

My score: 41, now I just need to figure out what it means.

Easter Eggs

This evening Sheila and I dyed Easter eggs for tomorrow. This is really the first time she actually helped to dye eggs I must confess that some years I skipped dying eggs completely when she was younger. Plastic eggs with candy substituted for the real thing. Sheila ended up with her fingers stained brown by dipping fingers into all the colors, and her shirt is an abstract work of art now, proudly displaying all the different colors.

After Easter, I will buy up steeply discounted dye kits to use for dying yarn and for next year. The pink, red, and purple dyes were unimpressive. The blue is beautiful, I tried to talk Sheila into dying more eggs blue, but she wanted more of all the colors. I do believe that the lime green and green dyes would make a really pretty sock yarn.

Next year, I might set everything up for her, but allow her to do the dipping of eggs herself. Maybe I can talk Katie into bring Emily over for a really messy, fun time.

I have an addiction

I don't know what it is about yarn. I have sworn to knit down my stash, and not buy any more yarn. But there are so many soft, beautiful yarns out there. And sock yarns! Lots and lots of sock yarns. Seems that I am adding yarn faster than I can knit it. MUST QUIT BUYING YARN. MUST KNIT MORE!

dying with kool-aide

Finally did it, tried to dye some yarn using kool-aide. I had a skein of Lion Brand Aran in off white that I knew I would never knit up into anything and I was told that the lighter colors of wool often do not felt well. Seemed to take forever to put up into two skeins.

I used cherry, lemon-lime, lemonaide, and twisted blueberry for the colors. Put the wet skeins in two microwave safe dishes and rotated nuking each one for two minutes. Not sure how I like it, but my dgd wanted colorful yarn. So, here it is hanging from the shower head.

Babies and Knitting Needles

Just what is it about babies and knitting needles? Do they come with a little needle homing device in their diapers? Or do the needles call to them from inside boxes and bags like a siren to come and get them? Why is it that when a baby does get a hold of our knitting, they unerringly pull out the needle with all the stitches on it?

Emily quietly and swiftly found my knitting bag, and took out the needle holding most of the stitches on a scarf I am knitting for my father for Christmas. At least I was able to save my work. I am such a slow knitter that loosing a row or two can become a real tragedy. Fixed it and will work on it some tonight.