Perfection

I finished the baby blanket for my nephew a few months ago (in time for Christmas, in fact), but have waited sending it because my hubby said he wanted to buy something else and send it along with the blanket. I have decided to send it anyways (before the boy is too old for a blankie) and spent the weekend readying it for gifting. It needs a back because my weave ins are showing and I don't like that, so I bought a piece of fabric to back it with and washed both the blanket and the backing (seperately). I knew there was a chance that the colors would run and I was right.
I pulled it from the wash to find fuzz all over the inside of my washer and strewn all over the blanket, as well as greyish blocks where there were once white ones. I was almost ready to cry. Instead I sat down and hand picked all the fuzz off the blanket and found that most of the discoloration came from the halo of multicolor fuzz that was covering the blanket and that once all the fuzz was (mostly) gone that the blanket had a very soft, comfy, favorite broken in shirt kind of feel and now I love it more then before. 

While washing the blanket I decided to use the remaining yarn that I had left from it to make a hat for the boy. It came out near perfect (I was squealing with delight as my son tried it on and it fit perfectly). I'm thinking of washing it before sending it so that it'll be just as soft as the blankie. I might take another day and make little booties as well, but I think there has been enough of a delay in sending. I'm waiting to see if I can borrow a friend's sewing machine so I can sew the backing onto it, otherwise it mike take another day or so to get it sewn together.
I went back to the gym for the first time since before Thanksgiving. They now have a Mommy and Me gym where I can workout during the day (instead of having to wait for hubby to get home or try to find a babysitter) and he can play. It's really great. The play area for him is covered with gym mats and foam blocks and different shapes for them to stack and jump or slide off of. There's also a climbing wall and I can't wait until he realizes it and tries it out for the first time. Once he does I won't be able to keep him off of it. He had a lot of fun and didn't want to leave, but after no exercise for several months I was ready to fall off the back of the treadmill after only thirty minutes (really I was grateful that I was able to go that long for my first time back). I don't think I'll go tomorrow, but Friday I'll be back in there. I'll need a day to rest because I'm sure that I'm going to be hurting tomorrow. Or maybe I will and just take it easy to stretch things out and keep it from cramping up. I don't know yet, I'll have to see how I feel. Right now I feel great which means I did just enough at the right intensity. In the last five minutes I really thought I was going to lose my legs and go flying off the back of the treadmill (LMAO just thinking about it). Right now I feel just about perfect :-)
top left: blanket before washing; top right: blanket after washing; bottom left: hat before construction; bottom right: finished hat on cutie model

The Things that I Think of

Still working on my finger callouses, but I won't be able to take my first lesson until after the start of March. I've been trying to tune my ukulele, but it just doesn't sound quite right. I might just be too much of a perfectionist, but the sound that I'm trying to get seems to be inbetween where it is and where it goes when I tweak the tension just a smidge tighter. It's maddening. What I need is an actual ukulele that's already tuned to be played so I can hear the notes and then tune mine. I can only find small tracks online of the notes and they don't sound like anything that I can make with my strings. I even tried using the piano on Garageband and playing the same C note over and over again to get the third string tuned, but it never sounds right. It always sounds a bit too high or a bit too low. Arghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!
I bought a few skeins of yarn this week that I'm really excited about. One is a Colinette fingering weight in Salty Dog ( a medium blue that is just so gorgeous I knew I had to make a pair of socks for myself and hopefully have enough left to knit a pair for my boy). I love the color and the name was so great I had to buy it. Just HAD to. I also picked up 12 balls of Rowan Cashsoft for the Jess Gansey pattern featured in Interweave Knits (the actual pattern is found on their website for free). It's a really nice pattern using a fingering weight on really tiny needles. I'll be done with it in about ten years and then I'll give it to my mom (ha ha ha). Hope it doesn't take that long to finish. I also have to look and find yarn to start my Buffyknits project. I was going to start with the hot pink mock boat neck sweater that Buffy sports in one episode (I'll look through my DVD's and find the actual episode so you can see the one that I'm talking about), but with everything else that I'm trying to get done I'm thinking a chunky knit would be a better jumping off point. There are several to choose from from the fourth and fifth seasons. There's a beautiful brown sweater knit in chunky stockinette and a grey tweed with shots of garter stitch worked intermittently though a stockinette. The choices are limitless and with me starting with a size small enough to fit a six year old will make it all go faster (although with a chunky knit I might just go ahead and size for an adult.....my skinny friend comes to mind.....she'll need sweaters once she moves back to Michigan or Washington).
Where to go next has been a topic of conversation as of late. We've been here in Guam for over a year now and have two more to go. I would stay here if I could import all of my family that I miss or if it was easier (and cheaper) to go and visit all my family. The weather here beats out every place that I've ever been. It gets hot some days, but the percentage of beautiful days can't be beat (unless you live in Hawaii). We're thinking of San Diego, but talk has also drifted to Spain, Italy or Florida. When I think of a place to live, ultimately the first thing that I think of is " What is the probability that someone will nuke this place?"
I don't know why, maybe too much Jericho and Sarah Conner Chronicles (although it was something I though of before then). The second thing I think of are all the natural disasters that can occur and the probability of them. Once a place has been deemed safe (ish) then it's given the thumbs up. San Diego is the first place I think of when thinking of the first place an enemy would nuke, but the weather is nice and I have family that I want to spend time with there AND if given a choice I want to be incenerated immediately (at Disneyland while riding the Haunted Mansion, ha ha ha!) as opposed to trying to survive in the aftermath or getting radiation poisoning and dying a slow painful death. Besides, there are so many things to do around there that you can get in a lifetime of living in just a few years and that outweighs the nuclear halocaust that may be. These are the things that flit through my mind at odd times of the day. It's weird and quirky and my brain is always very matter of fact about it.

Do U Ukulele too?

Another Valentine's gift was bestowed on me today. Actually I don't know if it's really a Valentine's gift or just one of those things that he's been wanting to get me for awhile now and just got around to it today because we were in the store. Anyways, it's a little ukulele from JB's Ukulele Hut. I got the smallest (and I think cheapest) one that they had. The premise here being that I can learn on a little one and then upgrade to a bigger one if it proves to be a genuine interest and then pass the little one onto my daughter who seems keen (at this moment in time) to learn how to play as well. If not then I'm not out as much money as I would have been and I can still pass it on to my little ones. You get a free hour lesson with your purchase and then you can buy more lessons (three months worth for $60 a month/ once a week for 30 minutes each). Right now I'm getting my fingers conditioned by holding down the strings as if I am playing and I'm trying out strumming to a rhythm although all my "songs" sound like crud because I can't seem to get the darn thing tuned. I'm sure that I'll learn, but for right now it is the bane of my existence. I have a guitar as well (one that is a bit on the big side for me) and I'm hoping that learning the ukulele will spark a reinterest in learning the guitar. The interest has always been there, there was just the lack of lessons and the frustration of not having someone to show me how. I can't seem to pick it up from a book like I can other things (namely knitting and other crafts).
I really like my little ukulele and I'm hoping to learn how to play Somewhere Over the Rainbow on it. You know the song that I'm talking about, done Hawaiian style by the guy whose name I could never hope to pronounce, much less actually try to spell right now. The hubby seemed excited about the purchase as well and already has tales of me cutting a CD a year from now after I get my more expensive ukulele upgrade. He has our daughter living in Hawaii, playing to millions, and inviting us to vacation with her for months out of the year. It's nice to have dreams ;-)

Watch this

Happy Chinese New Year! I know I'm a couple days late, but they don't stop celebrations until the 15th when they have the dragon dance. I had to give a shout out because it's a big deal here being so close to China. The year of the Rat is upon us. I don't know exactly what that means, but I do know that my mom, my son and I all share the same Chinese animal. We're all monkeys! My daughter was very pleased to find that she was born in the year of the horse (horses are her favorite animal) and my hubby is a tiger. By the way mom, a pair of your socks that I'm knitting are from a pattern named Monkey. Fitting I thought. They're a pretty lace patterned sock that can be found by going to www.knitty.com and clicking on archives then on socks and then on Monkey. Now you can see what one pair will look like. I thought they were very pretty and I hope that you like them too.
We're all recovering from strep throat and are almost finished with our ten day regimines of antibiotics. I will be very glad when we are. I just found out that they opened a Mommy and me section to the gym last month which means that I can go there with my son and put him in a room to play while I work out. Before no one under the age of ten was allowed in the gym and they didn't offer any type of daycare so if you were a stay at home mom they wanted you to stay at home and work out too I guess. I'm going to start this week and go from there. My friend said that she would go with me, but even if she doesn't I'll be up there everyday ellipticalling my butt off (literally I hope). In my CT they found a calcification in my right kidney, but luckily it wasn't big enough to cause any problems. That has prompted me to drink 2-3 liters of water/liquid a day to keep from getting a kidney stone (I've had gall stones and I've heard they're similar on the pain scale and I'm not going there again!!!). So that will make me ready for all the sweating that I'm going to be doing. I'm hydrated and ready to go. I know from past experience that my diet will fall in line the more exercise that I do. Something about exercising makes me crave veggies and good for me foods and also makes me tend to eat less. It's a blessing that I'll take.
Valentine's came early for me. My hubby bought me a beautiful watch from the GFS downtown that was $80. I only put the price down because it's a big deal to me. I've never had an $80 watch before and it blows my mind and I'm so scared of scratching it. When I was a kid a watch was too expensive unless you got it out of a cereal box or with your meal in the drive thru. It was one of the cheapest watches there (I'm thrifty and it hurt me to watch him drop even that on a watch) as we were surrounded by Armani, Seiko, and Tag Haeur (?sp). There was a Tiffany's a few stores down as well as Chanel, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, and all the other big names that you would normally have to pass by a guard who has to swipe you credit card before you can even get into the place. The DFS is a big name mall with duty free shopping (DFS....... get it?) for all the Japanese tourists to spend their money. Down the street there is a row that I imagine Fifth Ave looks like and those are the actual stores where they do check your credit before they allow you to enter. Want a $10000 handbag from a big name designer? You can find it at the DFS. Want and Armani suit custom fitted, $50 chocolates, $1000 bottle of Henessey, and the most numbers that you've ever seen put on a price tag for a watch or charm for a charm bracelet? Then go to the DFS. You can find some deals and most things are in the under $100 range (but then again I'm smart enough not to walk into Tiffany's and the handbag shops so I stick to the cosmetic counters). My watch is a cheapo, by these standards so it makes me feel a little better and at the same time I feel very pampered and ritzy as I watch my new watch sparkle on my wrist. It's so purdy!!!!! (Picture will soon follow)