Yesterday morning Ben twisted his ankle while taking out the trash. He said he heard a snap and it was rapidly swelling. A trip to urgent care confirmed my suspicion: he broke his ankle!



The good news is they said it was a clean break through the lateral malleolus of his fibula. It's lined up nicely and shouldn't need pins or other surgery to help it heal. The bad news is it's his right foot, so we are unsure how long he cannot drive. He has an appointment with orthopedics next week. Fingers crossed he can get a walking boot!

Figured I should share the finished product:

This is the first of two shawls I made this summer. I ended up following the original pattern almost to completion, then ripped it out and started again. I combined the pattern with another I like. Many details posted on my ravelry page.

I love it. Blanket-like, bright happy colors, and a delicate lace pattern.


Oh I hate July. Summer, please end, I hate you.

Jack loves to read.  I took some pictures of him reading during two lazy summer afternoons.

We rounded out July with another trip to visit grandparents.  There was A. Lot. of swimming.  Jack worked hard to coordinate using a snorkel for the first time and he had great success!  He and Sam both enjoyed the novelty of flippers until their feet were raw with blisters from the rubber.  They swam every morning and every evening for the weekend we were there.

One of the office staff had baby goats the Friday we arrived.  She invited us over to see the farm animals.  The boys were very brave and outgoing petting and feeding the goats and horses, and pestering the sweet kitty. Sam drew a thank you card, with complete goat anatomy.  Can you spot the eyes, nose, horns, beard, and "pumps"? ("Because it's a woman goat.")

Here's a hodgepodge of photos I took over the summer.

This is called yarn chicken:

When you are binding off with a limited amount of yarn and hope it's enough.

I play it often, wanting to squeeze all I can out of each skein.  

 But this one is a doozy.  Roughly 1,400 stitches across with a bind off that's a pain-in-the-butt to undo if you have to rip it out ("Icelandic bind-off").  I'm going to be very cranky when this doesn't quite fit...but I'm too bull-headed to chicken out first.

. . .

Later today:

Dang it!  So close.  I'm going to try something radical.  Instead of picking back the bind off and the previous row, I'm going to drop the remaining stitches and try to bind off using the top row- in essence only ripping out my remainder.  It might be a little lopsided but with blocking it won't be very noticeable.  Fingers crossed this works!

Esjan, one of several projects I finished recently.  This is a pattern from "celebrity" knit designer Stephen West.  I loved the large size and crazy, loopy tiers.  I made sure to stop by Purl Soho while in NYC to get yarn for it.  I love buying yarn as a souvenir!

I ended up knitting this shawl twice.  The first time I made a few mods to the pattern to account for my chosen yarn being smaller than what the pattern called for.  Still too small, and with too much leftover gray, I decided to rip the whole thing out and start again.

For those who always ask me how long it takes to knit - I made this twice in less than a month while simultaneously knitting a complete pair of socks, 4 inches of a fine gauge sleeve, and a few thousand stitches on another shawl.

I really liked the ruffles which naturally occur from the pattern.  However, I wanted to smooth out the garter stitch tension and make it as large and blanket-like as possible.  I gently blocked it and it grew magnificently.  The edge flattened into a large zig-zag - not ruffles but still fun (I expected this based on the pattern photos and other ravelry users).

Tomorrow I'll take up my other shawl sitting on needles.  It's fingering weight (smaller yarn, takes longer to knit the same area size) and I had to buy more yarn from the shop in GJ when I was out last week.  I also completed it once, then ripped it out completely to start again with a modified pattern.  I should really stop doing that ;-)

 

OK, one thing I will admit is nice about summer is that the boys are becoming closer friends than before. When we're not doing separate trips or camps, they spend all day and night together and they seem to really enjoy it. Here's some playtime photos from the last few days. As you can see, dressing up and playing superheroes is one of their top fun activities.

Jack made his costume crown during quiet time. I love that Sam wears this knight costume. I think he's the same age Jack was when I made it for him.  It's held up remarkably well considering it was cheap acrylic and has had heavy play!  

Jack says that he read Robin Hood to Sam during quiet time and afterwards they wanted to shoot arrows in the backyard. After Dad came home he assisted Sam with his first archery experience.  He seems so tiny to me! But this isn't far off from when we started Jack on archery too.