Mustard Seed Yarn Lab

It’s so hard to believe that this was my 5th Mother’s Day. You spend your whole life celebrating your mom on Mother’s Day, and then you have a child and suddenly Mother’s Day is yours too! It’s like, Oh Yeah! I’m a mom now too!

This little man made me a mom, and my life has been 10 times more fun these last 4 years. Emmet James was born the day before Mother’s Day, so my first Mother’s Day was spent in a hospital with a brand new baby. I was the happiest person in the world. And maybe the most tired person, too.

Now he is almost 4 years old. He makes us laugh everyday, and fills our hearts with joy. He is our biggest blessing. And I live for his hugs and kisses.

This year, we decided to make Nana a special mother’s Day cake. Emmet decorated it all by himself.

My husband’s mom is a very special Nana, and Emmet loves her “Up into the sky!” She is my mom now too, and the most loving second mom a girl could have.

My own mom is in Florida, but I will get a visit from her very soon, and then we’ll celebrate Mother’s Day all over again. Maybe Emmet will make her a cake!

And it was FREE! Yup. You see, every single thing we buy, we charge on one card. It is the only credit card we have. I pay it off once a month, sometimes twice if I have the money, so I never carry a balance. For every purchase, we get points. For every 5000 points we get a $50 gift card. So this time we got an Amazon.com gift card and I ordered this beauty. Much of the yarn I get is in hanks, and it takes me hours to wind them up with the hank around my knees, and it hurts my back and gets tangled up and there’s lots of anger involved. But this I did today for the first time, and it was like having someone hold the yarn for me, and it didn’t tangle. It only took me about 30 minutes to wind my first ball of yarn on it! I’m in love. (And the yarn was quite beautiful too….a Christmas gift from my sister.)

And now for something Un-knitting related:

My cutie had his very first dentist visit this week. He had a great time. The place was amazing, just for kids. It makes me jealous. When I was little I went to my parents dentist. This was way before the time of wearing sterile gloves or anything, and all I remember is hairy fingers in my mouth. And it was never fun.

Not like this.

Here it is. I managed to make a Nutkin Evil Twin. Yup, it’s twisting around just like the pattern had warned it would if I did not carefully follow the directions at the cuff. Oh well. I don’t mind too much.

This is the first time I’ve done a cuff like that. It was a bit tricky. You knit 5 rows, then purl a row, then knit 6 more rows and fold at the purled row. Then, and here’s the tricky part, you knit together the live stitches with the cast on stitches, BEING CAREFUL TO MATCH UP THE STITCHES……..this I apparently did not do.

See? It twists. And when you put it one, the pattern makes it twist around your leg. Sigh…I learn through my mistakes.

This is the first time I’ve ever tried a 3 needle bind off, too. It makes a very nice toe, but puts a ridge across the top, which I actually think looks really nice on this pattern. Some people don’t like the bind off for that reason. You don’t have to do the Kitchener stitch, though….which personally I don’t mind, as I consider it to be like magic, but I know many people hate doing it.  Why are there 2 ridges across the top of my toe? Why, how very observant you are! One is because of the bind off, and the other is where I think I must have accidentally purled a row and didn’t notice until I was binding off. (The dangers of watching a movie while knitting.) But thanks for noticing.

This is also the very first time I have tried a short row heel. It was fun and easy!! Why then, did it take me 3 days to finish the heel?  Ahhh….you ARE a perceptive one, aren’t you? Well, it took 2 days of procrastinating before I started, that’s why. When I am about to learn something new, I tend to think about it a lot before jumping in. I don’t know why. But I liked the process, even more than making the usual heel, because I didn’t have to deal with picking up stitches for a gusset. When you make a short row heel, there is NO GUSSET! WooHoo! And it looks nice, although I’m not sure I like the way it looks more than the other heel.

And have I mentioned I love making socks with Berroco Sox Metallic yarn? Did you see the sparkles? (Of course you did, you noticed everything else.) It’s a joy to knit with and I haven’t run into any pooling… and I’ve got a thing for sparkly yarn!

So I learned quite a bit with this sock, finished it in about a week…would’ve been sooner if not for the above mentioned procrastinating, and now it’s time to start the second. But first…..I will start painting the kitchen. Turning a yellow kitchen green. No worries, I’ll post on that too, so you can see.