Ugh! I Hate Waiting

I had my thyroid removed last week. Last year when I had my PET scan, my breast cancer and thyroid lit up. They have been following my thyroid for the past year with biopsies and ultrasounds. The nodule continued to grow, so the suggestion was made to have it removed. You don't know 100% percent whether or not it is cancer until you can biopsy the whole thing. So out it came. The surgery was not so bad. I spent one night in the hospital. I didn't take any pain meds other than Tylenol. Strep Throat hurt worse. Now comes the waiting for the pathology report. I hate that part. You mind goes to places it shouldn't go. It did not help that this week that one of the ladies in my May 2010 chemo group on breastcancer.org found out that her cancer has metastasized to her lungs and liver. She is 29 with a 3 year old boy. My heart cries for her. I hate this disease! It robs us of so much and changes our lives forever. Every little ache or pain and you wonder "Could that be a metastasis?" You can't help it. My buddy Ken, found out a couple of days ago that his chemo is doing its thing and fighting back his Stage IV lung cancer. I need to remember to celebrate those wins in the fight and not dwell on the losses as much.

Smooth Waves

Ok, I might just have this hat out of my system for a while. I love this hat style and the yarn I have been using. It is so soft and chunky. I also love the colors in this colorway. The aqua and greens just call to me. Usually I am a pink/red kind of girl, but these blues and green do make me happy too.

I bought a Boye pom pom maker recently to see how that worked for the poms. In the past I just wrapped the yarn around a piece of cardboard, etc. The cardboard made a good pom, but it was usually lopsided a bit. The pom pom makes makes a great pom. You are limited to size and fullness of the pom, but for most poms I will continue to use it. It was $3.75 well spent.

More Raspberries and Chocolate

Lin asked me to make her a big girl version of the baby hat like this one. I was more than too happy to do so. It is a fun hat and I love the colors in it.

Lin lives in Chicago and gets a whole lot of winter. She likes to wear things that make her smile when the winter just seems a bit too long and gray. I hope this lifts her spirits each time she wears it. Love ya Lin!  I will get this in the mail as soon as I can.

Blueberries and Grapes

A short time back, I made a baby hat similar to this one. My dear bloggy friend, Lin, saw it and go me thinking about making an adult size one. It is cute and fun for anyone to wear.

Back when I was on my rolled brim hat jag, I was able to crank out these babies pretty quickly. It is like that with this style of hat. They are very similar except for the top and the pom poms. I feel another knitting jag coming on...

My Son...Benjamin Butler

Tonight was Hurricane Highlights. It is a night where the school invites the public to celebrate the work the kids have been creating all year. There are art exhibits, band and chorus performances, silent auctions, a french cafe, concessions, and a whole bunch of other exhibits. Cara's Louisiana History teacher offered her students the opportunity to participate in the "wax museum" instead of having to take the 4th 9 weeks exam. Cara jumped on the opportunity.

She chose Benjamin Butler as the person she wanted to portray. She found him to be interesting and a challenge. We had a lot of fun getting her into costume. She wore one of Phillip's old suits and a pillow. I think she got a kick out of walking around the school in costume. Her "work time" was only 30 minutes, so she had plenty of time to walk around and see her friends perform their skills. As a figure in the wax museum, each person had to be in a pose completely still. Each figure had a question over them to give the viewer a clue as to their identity. If you guessed correctly, the figure came to life and told you something about them. Cara was wonderful. As I watched her I thought about myself and how there was no way I would have ever had the courage to do that. I would be one of the ones taking the test. She said only 3-4 in her class opted for the wax museum. I can understand that. Two of her friends were also wax figures. They were George Rodrigue and Kathleen Blanco. If Cara decides to try out for talented drama, she will be amazing!

Bear In Mind

I belong to a group on Ravelry called, MinKnits. She does Knit-a-longs each month. I have done several and decided to participate in the one for May. It is an adorable panda hat, Bear-y Cute.

I have only done one other stranded piece before, my You Are Here fingerless mitts. I much prefer to just use striping yarn to add in the color changes. But depending on the pattern, sometimes you have to do colorwork. The pattern is very cute and easy to follow. My stranded work? Not so much in the cute area. I see every little flaw and get annoyed looking at it. I should have paid more attention to it while I was knitting it as I could have gone back and corrected it, but noooo (in my best Steve Martin voice) I don't really give it a look until I am ready to photograph it. I am not ready to give up on colorwork. I will continue to practice and probably give this pattern another go.

Helping You Out

I am making a good go of working through my stash. Unfortunately (really it is fortunately), I continue to add to the stash. I cannot resist a sale on yarn. I know someday I will need that exact yarn to knit with.

I have been eyeing this pattern, Helping Hat,  for a bit. It seems like every time I reach into the stash, I pull out a striped yarn. For cables I want a solid. When my hand returned with this one in its grasp, I knew this pattern's time had come. It is a great pattern. Well, actually it is three patterns in one; each one having just a little bit of difference in the cabling/ribbing section. I like the way this version turned out. The pattern was easy to follow and to remember.As soon as my hand finds more solid yarn, I plan to knit up another version. 

Our Final Game of the Season

Saturday, we saw my beloved LSU Tigers play. It will be the last game we will be able to make this year. I have more surgery coming up and kinda have to play the next couple of weeks by ear. Watching my boys play was the perfect way to spend the day. I forgot my phone and camera, so I couldn't take a picture at the game.

What I didn't forget was my knitting. I love having a piece of mindless knitting. I did not miss a single thing and was able to knit the whole time. I am a lot slower than when I get to look at my knitting, but this gives me two loves at the same time. Add that to the Tiger's sweep of the series with Kentucky and it was all good.

A Royal Wedding

It must be a girl thing to love weddings. I remember playing "wedding" with my friends and fantasizing about how our weddings would be. From the dresses, to the flowers, music, and food, it was all fun to think about. When there is a royal wedding, you get to see all of the fluff and pageantry at its best. I remember vividly when Charles and Diana were married. I closely followed the events preceding the wedding. Someone was going to be a princess and I wanted to watch. She was my age. How cool! I woke up in the middle of the night to watch the ceremony and discussed it with my friends. We all loved it and had hopes of adding some of the parts of it to our weddings someday.

Fast forward almost 30 years and Charles and Diana's older son, William, is married today. I knew I would want to watch the wedding, so I stayed up and knit. I loved watching what the people wore and all of the crazy hats (Yes I am talking about you Princess Beatrice). I loved the moment when Kate stepped out of the car and we finally were able to see her dress. I especially loved how they played a fanfare when the Queen entered the church and watching her while everyone sang "God Save the Queen". My favorite part was when the bride and groom left the church in the open carriage. Everyone waved and cheered. All weddings should be like this.

I thought back to the day when I watched his parents marry and how I had dreams of my own wedding and marriage. A lot has happened in those 30 years. I am now married to my prince and have my own princesses. Sometimes our lives don't take the paths you think they will take. If you are lucky, it will take you right where you want to be. I am one of those lucky ones.

She Treads Lightly

One of the things I am trying to do this year is broaden my knitting techniques. These fingerless mitts have a lateral or Vikkel Braid. It could not figure out how to do this braid at first, but after looking at a couple of videos and picture tutorials, the light bulb went on. As usual, I was making it harder than it really was. I like how this braid looks. The Linen stitch adds interest too.

Technically, I finished these mitts on 4/29. I stayed up all night and watch the Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding. Since I wanted to blog about the wedding on 4/30, I chose to post these the day before since I never went to sleep between the two events.

Guess Where I Am

Cara and her friends have a great time together. It seems like every weekend something is going on and they get together. This weekend the Louisiananime Convention was in Baton Rouge. They had to go. Cara and her friends spent weeks planning their costumes and such. She ordered a wig and costume off of Ebay. The wig arrived in time, but the costume did not. I drove Cara, Twix and Lyuke

up there where they met up with Sydney and Caitlin. I brought my Dr. Who scarf, found a good spot and sat back to people watch. There were some sights to see. So many interesting things to see. I positioned myself right where the participants would come and go from the events. I didn't know many of the characters, but I did recognize a few. My favorite was a guy dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow. I can never get too much of Captain Jack.

The Thingies

I went on a buying jag when some of my favorite yarn went on a very good sale. Now I am on a quest to use it up. I like this self-striping yarn. The colorway is pretty and looks great in a hat. I wanted to see how it looks on a pair of fingerless mitts.

This pattern, Malabrigo Hand Thingies, is perfect for this yarn. It knits up almost like stockinette, but the slipped stitches add a bit of interest. The mitts were a little tight for me, but perfect for Robyn. I will knit up this pattern again and add a couple of stitches to modify it for me.

Snips and Snails

Since the first baby hat went so quickly, I decided to do another one.

I see a lot of these stocking cap type hats on Ravelry and they look fun and easy. That is the direction I decided to take. It really is a variation on the rolled brim hat that I made incessantly in '09. It turned out cute. It was fun to knit this one.

I have just about decided to reopen my Etsy shop and sell some of my knitting. The jewelry will still be there and Robyn would be selling her knit animals and sewn treasures. I need to play around with it a little, but I am just about there.

Raspberries and Chocolate

Lately baby hats have been catching my eye. I joined a handmade sellers group on Facebook and many of the members are "hookers" meaning they crochet. They make some of the cutest baby hats. It has been a while since I made a baby hat, so I thought I would head in that direction.

I love the color of this yarn. It makes me smile. This jester style hat is so cute on. I made one a while back for one of Gina's granddaughters. It is a perfect style for this yarn.

It's All Good

We found some more tickets to an LSU baseball game. This time we were in far left field. They were ok, but I like the ones from the last game the best. It was a good game. LSU's pitching needs to pick up and fast. They also have been leaving runners stranded on base. This one was a close one with the Tigers holding on at the end. The last several games they have lost it in the 9th inning, but this time Matty Ott was there for the save. Yea. I love this game!

Where's Dean Street?

Here is is. It is just what you were waiting for...another cable hat. Yes, I am still on my cable streak. I have had this hat in my queue for a bit and it finally made it to the top. I don't really knit then in order of my queue, but it was finally chosen. Sometimes when I look at my queue, a pattern just reaches out and says "knit me". This one did. I had the option for knitting a rolled brim or a ribbed brim. I had never done a rolled brim that had anything other than stockinette for the rest of the hat, so I wanted to see how that would look. I like the look. It gives it just enough interest to make it stand out. I like a rolled brim anyway, so this really worked for me. The cable was the same one used throughout the hat so I could continue watching Dr. Who on Netflix without the fear I would forget the pattern. (Robyn introduced Cara and I to Dr. Who and I have been on a roll watching seasons 1-4 on the computer. I can see why they were so upset when David Tennant left the series.) So...there you have it. Dr. Who and knitting. The perfect duo.

P. S. I am working on a Dr. Who scarf. It is my "car knitting". I leave in the car and work on when I am waiting at doctor's appointments, car line, restaurants, etc. Someday you will see it here :)

Fetch These

"Fetching" is one of the most popular patterns on Ravelry. There are over 17,700 projects listed and tons more have it in their queue. It is easy to see why. It is a lovely pattern. Nice cables that twist toward your thumb and the 4x1 ribbing gives it a different look from many of the other fingerless mitts. I did feel the need to play around with the thumb. I like a thumb gusset. It doesn't pull the knitting out of shape like many of the other types of thumbs do. Sometimes I get a bit of a thrill that I feel accomplished enough to be comfortable modifying a pattern to suit my needs.

I used some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran that I had bought for another project. I loved knitting with this yarn. It was a good choice for these mitts.

Jesse's Boy

I could not help the name of this hat. The pattern is called Jesse's Christmas Hat. The name Jesse always reminds me of the song, Jessie's Girl by Rick Springfield. Since the hat was knit with a guy in mind, I changed it to Jesse's Boy. This hat, like the Who's Claudia, has that prefect mix of cables and ribbing. It was fun to knit and would look great on a anyone. Yup. Another great pattern.

I didn't love the yarn so much. It was called Barley and although it was a brand I have used tons of times, this yarn was more "rustic" in that it had small threads of a different type of yarn that would shed quite a bit. I don't think I'll buy it again even though I love the color.

Who's Claudia?

Ever since I learned how to do cables, I love knitting them. I am drawn to patterns that have them crisscrossing back and forth. This pattern is perfect for what I like. One, it is a hat (one of my favorite things to knit) and two there are cables. A twofer. The cables give it just enough interest that I need to pay attention somewhat and the ribbing part after the cables are complete, let me do some mindless knitting. Claudia is the perfect pattern for me.

Hair Today (and it better still be there tomorrow)

Mom and Cathy wanted to know how my hair was coming in. The back has the most and the front and sides are lagging bit behind. What surprises me it the curls. I had read about people having chemo curls, but I didn't think I would get them. I have never had a curl in my life that wasn't chemically produced. Yet, I have them now. I find myself playing with them and of course I am enjoying having hair again. Still not loving the gray, but I am learning to accept it. It is still too early to think about putting color on it unless I like the color orange. I have never liked orange, unless it was juice.

Please forgive the wonky angle of the picture. It is not so easy to take a picture of the back of your head.