It Runs in the Family

We try to instill the importance of education in our child's mind. Conceptually speaking, graduating from a school is more significant than the ceremony, certification or party that symbolize or celebrate this personal historical milestone. The other day our little family chatted about high school prom. I didn't have one and Bill didn't go to his, so we are counting down days (3,200 and some change) to Henry's, a truly historical event. Henry has been rather focused on which college gym he wants to play basketball in, which shadows the other aspects of high school graduation. "What about a date?" says Mom, who knows just that much about prom. "I'll have a date." says Henry, very confidently. "You mean you'll have a girlfriend?" says Mom, (you are getting my attention, kiddo). "I might." says Henry, less confidently. "If you don't have a girlfriend, where do you find a date?" Mom doesn't know much about the dating world. "I'll just get a date from that website, you know, they advertise during basketball games on TV?" the kid knows what he's talking about. It was eHarmoney.com. Now review the How We Met stories, from Bill and Vivian, see a family trend?

Trinket the Pillow on Thursday

Warm, soft and furry, what else can you ask for in a pillow.

Dye Day and Charity Knitting

About a month ago I brought couple big bags of donated white wool yarn and a bunch of Kool-Aid packets to my mom's place in Carmel for a dye day. She's been knitting all her life using commercial yarns and had never dyed yarn before.

Since then she has knitted with some of the yarn that we dyed that day, and this is what's left when I visited her again last week.

These are the baby sweaters and vests from some of the Kool Aid dyed yarn, combined with other colorful yarns. She has a pretty wild sense of colors.

These intarsia patterns are from various pattern booklets and magazines that people donated recently.

Couple of these sweaters and vests are mostly wool and I will save them for the next round of CIC challenge. The rest will go to local charity groups.

Coat Ripped

In less than two years, my stash of Paton's Classic Wool has gone from this:



to this:



to this:



It was planned for Southwest Goes Uptown by Lily Chin, published in Knitters magazine Fall 1999. The slip stitch pattern gave me some trouble, and a terrible experience with SonShapes who failed to make me an ever so gorgeous wood 36" size 10 circular needle for $35 left me a sour taste on this project.

The previous entries: here, here and here.

The coat rested in the back of my closet for the past year, and couple of weeks ago I finally ripped it all out. My it felt good!

Now go on and plan the next challenge. I want to make something:
1. Large, not a hat or toy, most likely adult size garment
2. Textured. I'm not into color work, and I have two simple projects on the needles already (garter stitch and stockinette stitch), so I need something more engaging.
3. I want to use some of my fine weight yarn, alpaca, cashmere or wool.
4. Use stash! I will find pattern for what's in my stash, not the other way around.

For those on Ravelry, feel free to look at my queue and stash and make suggestions.

Bagged by Frisky

Frisky the ever so cute Chihuahua, who's mom blogs at Yawn Over, wants me to fess up:

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? 10 years ago, the Tuesday morning after Father's Day, we found out I was pregnant with Henry, our first and ever child. I put in a test at Kaiser the day before, after feeling "off" the whole weekend, and told Bill to wait for the result with me in the morning. I wanted to wait for the hospital to do the test, for someone to officially tell me "Yes, you are not dreaming. You are pregnant." The wait was anxious but I wanted to prolong it before my world turned upside down. Bill held my hand while I called the advice nurse line. The nurse was matter of fact, "The test result is positive. You are pregnant." No congratulations, not even a smile in the voice. Oh my heart leaped and we didn't know what to say to each other. We held on to the news to each other for the next seven weeks. It was a delicious secret we shared only with each other, while the small bud grew and grew. Thank you for bringing back the most wonderful memory, Jennifer!

2. What are 5 things on my TO-DO list for today? Today is a rather dull day compare to last week and earlier this week while I worked and ran around like mad. The next few days will be rather eventful:
a) my birthday is tomorrow, my friend at work is taking me out to lunch and our little family will go out to dinner;
b) I'm taking Friday off (and refuse to work the weekend to catch up!), Henry and I will go to Monterrey Bay Aquarium and then have dinner with my mom;
c) we'll celebrate Father's day on Saturday by taking Henry's Dad to Stanford Shopping Center and the restaurant of his choice;
d) Henry will be starting his first summer camp next Monday and it will be quite a juggle on his parents' schedules;
e) our UFO group meeting is next Wednesday night.

3. Snacks I enjoy: In my desk drawer right now: pistachio, raisins, walnuts, and on my desk, a pear and an apple. Guess that tells you what I'd like myself to eat, then again, if you have chocolate I'd trade all of these for a box of truffles.

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: return my street back to a working ranch. We live in a new development that was a ranch for many years. If I have the money, I'd buy out all the other neighbors, let them live in the houses for however long they want, but in the end, tear down the houses and rebuild the ranch. The ranch will serve as education facility for local schools.

5. Places I have lived: Beijing (China), Jiangxi province (China), Guangzhou (China), Palo Alto (CA), Santa Clara (CA), San Jose (CA).

6. Jobs I have had: dog groomer, office clerk at Hoover Institution, library clerk at Hoover library, vendor in various flea markets, shop clerk at The Knitting Room, telemarketing sales girl at a Chinese PC distributor.

I will tag some of my mom-friends, because I want to read your answers to question #1: Sarah, Lesley, Zelda, Cindy, and Jocelyn.