Sunday, November 10, 2013

Happy Birthday!

Happy 238th Marine Corps Birthday!

The Marine Corps birthday is kind of a big deal in the Marines.  All day long, Mike's phone has been buzzing with wishes of  "happy birthday, Devil Dog!"  Once a Marine, always a Marine, and Mike has been a Marine for 22 years now, so there were a lot of phone calls and texts.

And this year we celebrated with our little Devil Pup!

It's Sunday, so Mike isn't in cammies, but Camden is!  Complete with a little Eagle, Globe, and Anchor embroidered on his onesie.

So, Happy Birthday Marines!  No better friend, no worse enemy.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Still here! And still knitting!

Wow!  Time does certainly get away, doesn't it?  One minute I feel like I've just barely moved in, and the next I've been here for more two months but still have boxes to unpack.  This house is a bit bigger than the one we left, and has a bit different layout, so I've yet to figure out how we "live" in it.  We left a one story house with a FROG (Finished Room Over Garage--how cool is that name?!) and moved into a two story house.  How do you organize that?  Do you keep two sets of cleaning rags, one up and one down?  Et cetera, et cetera.  Terrible problems, right?

This is my season of learning.  Learning how to be a mama, learning how to balance a master's student's reading list, learning how to not do everything, and learning how to not feel bad about it.  Mike's position here is more time consuming, more that he realized it would be I think, and even he is learning how to let go a little.  Everything isn't always put away anymore, and sometimes the dishwasher stays full for a couple of days.  And some things we delegate more than we used to (pizza can be delivered, too, not always made at home).  But we are all fed, all clean, all happy.  Even the four-footed ones.

Despite the nursing theory reading load (and don't get me started on how I feel about nursing theory) I have managed to get some knitting done!
Five pair of socks.  This is kind of cheating, because I had finished up the knitting on these in the spring but left the Kitchener on all of them to the end.  Ten socks to Kitchener all at once.  I don't think I will do that again, but I now have great muscle memory on the Kitchener stitch. 
A pair of fingerless mitts.  The entire pair is completely finished now, so there will be a post on what they are and what mods I made.  Besides, you can't really tell what that pattern is because that yarn is LOUD.  But the color is as per the recipient's request and she loves it.
I started some vintage crewel work.  This is a kit I bought for about eight dollars from Etsy.  It's from the early 80s, I believe.  The pattern is cute, but man!  The colors!  Really atrocious!  The sun is a strange raspberry pink color, and the flower is hot pink.  If those two colors were toned down a bit it might be better.  I've been thinking about raiding another (Etsy-purchased) crewel kit for more appropriate colors. 

These vintage bark cloth kits are not the needlework to have during a great movie.  The needle makes a loud "whoosh" noise when you pierce the bark cloth and drag the yarn through.  "That's a loud craft" is how Mike put it.

Lest you think I have not been knitting little things, get a load of this.
That is a picture of the cutest baby in the world wearing a hand-knit, Mama-made hat.  Could I love him more?  Every day I think no, I could not possibly love him more and then I wake up the next day and he steals my heart again.

It was a great Halloween.