She Knits Shizknits

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best viewed LARGE
from July of 2006...look at how little they were!

lucky for seven years...

Today is Little Man's actual birthday...he's 7!!!! This is what he looked like 7 yrs ago...

I swear he still gives me this same look sometimes!  And look at him now:

He has always been a sweet-natured, quiet kid- definitely an introvert (like his momma). He can play with Legos, make origami, or read for hours on his own.  Never much of a talker, when he does say something it's usually well-thought out....or it's something out of this world/silly/strange...he manages to come up with the funniest questions!

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

Happy 4th!

More photos of our annual block party here

cute, but in a creepy sort of way....

saw this video and at first I was like, CUTE...then about 30 seconds into it, I started vacillating between cute and creepy... Monkey Boy, on the other hand, was fascinated and wanted to watch it over and over.
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FO: Hawkmoth Shawl

FO Report: Hawkmoth Shawl, from the free Revontuli/Northern Lights pattern.
Yarn: 780yds of my handspun, Black Apples (superwash merino)

Needles: US 8

Pattern Talk: Revontuli is a free pattern. There are charts and some written instructions in the PDF. The shawl is knit from the top center out, by casting on a few stitches and then increasing every row. Every 10 rows, there is a row of YOs/SSK/K2TOG, which creates a nice eyelet affect.




My Mods:  After completing all the charted repeats, I realized I (probably) had enough yarn to do one more repeat. I was close: I had enough to do 8 more rows, then I started casting off. The pattern calls for a few rows of garter stitch near the edging, which I couldn't do since I was running out of yarn. I actually did run out about 25 stitches from the finishing the castoff edge. Luckily I had some other similar-looking handspun that worked just fine for the final castoff stitches.

After blocking, the shawl turned out to be nearly 6ft from tip to tip, and about 4ft wide. It's the biggest shawl I've knit yet- perfect for wrapping up in after yoga!

The original pattern also calls for a self-striping yarn, but obviously this handspun is not self-striping. I love how the colors flow into each other...

I can see knitting this shawl again in another handspun...the pattern shows off color changes really well and is fun/easy to knit.

Oh, and I named this shawl the Hawkmoth shawl because that's what Little Man said I looked like in the above photo- do you see the resemblance? LOL

random thursday

Oh how I love orange!

Little Man made me breakfast this morning...

...it's a bowl of ice cream with 'special syrup' (maple syrup) and a chocolate kiss. He was quite proud of his creation! I think ice cream for breakfast is pretty tasty, too! LOL

And a sneak peek at my latest knitting FO:

It's a shawl I just finished knitting from my handspun. More photos to come- when I figure out how to photograph it since it's so big!

Lastly....Does a bear scat in the woods???

long time no see....

Oh my. It's been almost a month since I posted last! I guess the end-of-school-year activities + getting a brand new computer upgrade will do that to a person.

So what have we been up to in the past thirty days?

Little Man's school year ended with a special First Grade Fiesta. He came home with a cool poncho, sombrero, and tissue paper flower.

Since it was his last day, our whole family walked him to school.  Monkey Boy was especially excited to be allowed to walk to school, since I usually take LM by himself in the morning.

To mark the end of the school year, we went on a three day camping trip with some friends. It was a blast- the boys got filthy dirty, fished, cooked smores, and ran around with their new friends.

Here's the smores crew:

Monkey Boy was convinced that sticking his tongue out would produce a better smore:

LM, on the other hand, spent his time perfecting the double barreled smore:

We were at the lake for three days, and each night ended just like this:

The small men also went fishing with the Dearest, which they really enjoyed despite not getting a single bite.  The Dearest said one of the fishing coves was full of 3-4ft long carp- if they had hooked one of those, it might have taken the kiddo into the water!

A few days after returning from our camping trip, it was time for Little Man's birthday party. Lately he has been playing Poptropica a lot online, so he wanted that as his theme. Unfortunately, there are no party supplies with Poptropica themes so I had to wing it.  I ended up making a custom invite for him to hand out.

 

In lieu of goody bags, I made each kid a t-shirt with a Poptropica character iron-on. Since Poptropica is all about traveling to different 'islands' and solving puzzles, we made up a quick scavenger hunt for the kids. They had to solve a math problem....

...which led them to a certain mailbox...

Inside the mailbox was a word search- they had to find all the words...

Once the word search was completed, they came back and the Dearest gave them a letter. All the kids had to gather around and figure out what the letters spelled:

It took them a while, but suddenly they realized that the word was "castle", and the hunt was on...everyone piled into the castle jumper...

and they quickly found the bag of t-shirts! I give all the credit to the Dearest for the fun hunt- he spent 45 minutes right before the party putting all the hints together and printing everything out. I think the kids really enjoyed it:

Other things I made:

...a 'birthday island' banner....

...and a 'tall cake' for Little Man (it's hard to see but this cake is three full layers tall!). LM did NOT want chocolate icing so we iced it with homemade vanilla buttercream.  Between the treasure hunt, the jumper, and too much cake and lemonade, I think a great time was had by all.

To top it all off, LM lost his second upper front tooth not long after the party was over, which meant that the tooth fairy was sure to visit. Oh, and we also found this very lovely, very LARGE moth hanging out on a neighbor's tire (in broad daylight, no less):

We looked it up in our caterpiller book and think it's a type of hawk moth. It was at least three inches across- huge! We kept it in a jar overnight, then Monkey Boy let it go the next morning.

What else have we been doing? Well, we've already been to the beach, and we're gearing up for the annual neighborhood 4th of July party this weekend....Somehow I need to find the time in the next few days to make pulled pork for the BBQ sandwiches I volunteered to bring! 

The Dearest is still working hard, I'm still haunting the yoga studio, and the small men are still creating chaos at home....so it's Life as usual at Chez Shizzknits. I promise to post more often- I've had a couple of emails from indignant relatives (you know who you are! LOL), wondering where the newest photos of the small men have been!

SPLAT

Four year old boys are so fun...this is what I heard from Monkey Boy (who was on the potty) today:

"Butt cheeks are like scissors...because you squeeze them together and cut the poop and then the poop goes SPLAT"

Wise little boy!

in which a monkey practices yoga

I have been attending a lot of yoga classes lately, which means I've also been doing more yoga at home. Monkey Boy is usually around to see me do some light yoga in the morning, and this morning he said he wanted to 'do yoga' too.

I was doing Tree Pose, so that's what Monkey Boy tried:





"grow your tree"



"look up and close your eyes"




"return to heart center" <

It wasn't a 'perfect' tree....but he was giggling and having so much fun that I don't think it matters. LOL

Memorial Day

This year's Memorial Day block party was supposed to be 'low key'.  We didn't pull out the waterslide, we didn't rent a jumphouse, we didn't put out a pool....we just sat around:

BBQd (lots of delicious tri-tip!):

...and let the kids just play. There was a lot of scooter and bike riding:

Then the squirt guns came out!



And of course we had to have water balloons. Why is it that water balloons take FOREVER to blow up, and the kids go thru them in seconds? I spent at least an hour blowing up about 200 water balloons. It took less than 2 minutes for them to all be used up!




The weather was just perfect: not too hot and not too cold. We started around 11am, and ended up staying outside all day long.  Around 6pm we finally decided to order pizzas for everyone who was still hanging out, clean up the street, and head inside to watch the Lakers game.

We finally got home around 7:30pm...just in time for a quick dunk in the tub for the small men.  They had their bath and then crashed HARD...I think they were both fast asleep before 8!  I don't blame them- I was pretty exhausted myself.  Even if all I did all day was sit around, chatting with the other mommas!