I went traditional

My long finished baby gifts for the new family additions have been photographed.
First up are the two Peas in a Pod hats (pattern by Susan B. Anderson):

I used Lion Brand Cotton Ease because I already had it in my stash, the hats look good and the pattern was straight forward. The only thing I would change next time would be the yarn, for one reason only: the accompanying simple newborn hats which I knit out of baby bamboo makes them look a lot rougher.
These are my plain baby hats with their little tops:
I love this yarn. It is so soft and nice to work with, it made the cotton blend feel like I was knitting with hemp.
My SIL is doing well and so are the two boys. They named one boy after our dad (actually her dad and mine share the same name, so it works out on both sides of the family) and the other after an uncle. Twins don't run in our family, but they do run in hers. But you did notice the blue and white color schemes, right? Thank goodness I went traditional, all their newborn baby photos are blue and white.

emergency rescue operation

Woke up Monday all better. I'm not sure what I had but it was random. I was so tired it took 30 minutes to work 2 rows of a 52-stitch row. That's 104 stitches in 30 minutes people!

On non-fiber related stuff:

Monday afternoon, I tricked my mother into helping me weed the garden. Thanks to the amazing amount of rain we've had this year the crop are growing like weeds---which gives you a pretty good idea of what our weeds are doing.

Piece of advice: pumpkin plant grow huge. Let me repeat that: Pumpkin plants are huge! My dad bought 2 seedlings for the 4 year old (as well as 2 strawberry plants, which are not doing as well). These 2 seedlings are now huge, ginormous plants taking over my entire garden. It's growing to the left, the right, all the way to the back where the corn is.
We had to replant a tomato plant in an emergency rescue operation.

The cucumbers are finally making an effort at actually growing and they've produced some really yummy results. The lettuce was bitter (what causes this?) so they got dumped.

Our many tomato plants will be flooding us with way too many tomatoes in a couple of weeks. This may make me miss the great radish overload of June.

Aside from that I finished two pairs of baby hats for my half brother's soon to be here twin boys. I thought about adding booties, but he's not the type to appreciate handmade gifts. At least I've made an effort. I'll post pics after I recover the camera from whomever took it last.

I've also cast on a pair of new socks. For me. My cousin, sister and mother asked when I would get around to making them a pair. My sister is still holding out hope for some thigh highs. Unfortunately for her, I can only handle project monogamy for short periods of time.

fine to sick

Yes it is possible to get the flu in the middle of the summer. Apparently (thank goodness for spell check, cause my temp is up and I can't quite spell right now), watching Space Monkeys (or apes or something, who knows?) and then getting up is enough for me to go from perfectly fine to sick, dizzy, fever with chills, aches etc.
I need to go lay down again.

my attention grabbing title

I'm annoyed.

My one year anniversary selling stuff through my etsy shop just passed. I had grand plans including rolling out a new logo, taking new pictures of my yarns in a similar setting to help unify the look of the shop, and renaming some of the yarns.

The new logo turned into a bust--I'm fully aware of where my artistic talents excel, and it's not in cartoons and logo making (should you need a charcoal drawing of a nude figure though, please call me). My efforts to get someone else to do the work kinda sucked, so it's back to square one.

I spent last week taking pictures in my free time and with the cooperation of the clouds and sun. After much fiddling with my point and shoot camera (have I mention how much I want a new camera? No? Then considered it mentioned), I got to the point where I thought I was taking some seriously good pictures. These pictures looked great in the camera, but once I downloaded them...disaster. All the pictures look like I took them with a black film on the camera lens, which sucks big time. Now I need to retake the pictures and find time to edit them.

The renaming plans is working out a bit better. But I suck at titles and naming yarns is a lot like giving stuff titles. Please refer to past blog post titles if you where in any doubt of my naming skills or check out my attention grabbing title for my MA thesis, which I totally would post except I don't want to.

I guess I can push thing back a bit to time it with the one year anniversary of my first sale in August. If I remember correctly, I registered for etsy and it took me some time to get the product/prices/images in order. I can totally make August. You know barring any major disasters.

flying bugs

I think Blogger is getting it's revenge on me. I'm ready to blog and it is not. Passive aggressive anyone?

Anyway, I thought I should mention a few house rule that we have around here:

1. No one touches any active knitting. I have a 4 year old who insures compliance--he's loud and insistent, bad combination for any would-be-perpetrators.

2. You can't watch TV and play the DS at the same time. This rule is of course twisted by the 4 year old to his advantage (he frequently revenges himself on the teenager this way).

3. No mention of the following words within hearing distance of the 4 year old: "mop", "park", "fire", "Starbucks" and anything that you may want to keep private and within the family. This includes venting about annoying people who he may run into at a later event. This includes my sister's boss. Spelling words and switching languages will usually work to avoid detection.

4. You must wear bug spray when entering the back yard. I think I need to import some frogs or something to control the annoying flying bugs.

5. The family camera must be returned to me promptly following any event that you need to use the camera for. That way it may be inspected for damage and it's physical location is verified. Somebody took the camera to record her graduation activities and I just got it back. Time lapsed: one month.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for FO now that I have the camera back.