UCLA Baby

Well, we heard of a new addition to our family! They haven't made an official announcement as far I know but they told us the news. So of course, I had to get started on a terrific baby gift. 

Now since I don't knit adult sized sweaters (while I'm typing in 80* weather), I'm all for baby sized sweaters. After that, it's strictly accessories! Side note: in the very beginning of my knitting  adventures, I chose to knit a sweater with the wrong yarn which I completed but it was a total disaster! It was not good.

So anyway, I present the UCLA Baby Sophisticate sweater. Isn't it adorable? I want to knit another one for my cousin but they live in Arizona which might not be all that practical is can be useful when they visit Cali. What the heck~!
I'm going to knit them one too anyway! Thinking a dark gray or a blue...



Lucky for me (and them) I had the right colors and enough to produce this cute sweater....it just feels awesome to have the perfect yarn in your stash. I also happened to have the right buttons although only 2 of each style. I think it adds some whimsy.








  I get to knit sweet, adorable baby things for 2 babies. Oh the possibilities!!

Baby Gifts

My cousin, Hannah is expecting her first baby at the end of September. Over the years, she has received various knit stuffed items ie. armadillo, bunny and monster. She will be putting them in the baby's room so that got me thinking I should do another search. Boy, my library has increased by at least 5 more stuffies.

I'm always trying to use up stash yarn and this Hungry Caterpillar is a prime example. I knit this in 2 days and used a variegated blue yarn for the body. The felt eyes don't match exactly like the book but that's okay. It sure does capture the essence of the book's version and that's fine with me. A very cute rendition and I will be knitting more if I need a baby gift.







So that got me thinking since the book is the hungry caterpillar maybe I can find a pattern for some fruit. Well, this apple is perfect. My first attempt I read a line wrong and had way too many stitches so I ripped it all out and began over. Much better.



So adorable. If I had  found this earlier, it would have been the perfect gift for the kids' teachers over the years. :)




Look how great it fits in Josh's hand. It's actually apple sized. He was laying on the ground watching TV so I had him hold it and it reminds me of Snow White after she bit into the apple. So now this part is complete with the apple and the hungry caterpillar.

TBT

It's another Thursday and so I'm doing the wayback machine to 2007. I'd actually have to scan photos to go back further....

Here is one of my first projects and Josh modelling the first of many many items...He' so little. :)





I'm throwing in a video too. I'm not a reggae fan for the most part but I do love UB40. Go figure.

NHL Awards

Something serious happened over the last 10 years that has taken a hold of me....most of you already know this and it's LA Kings hockey and pretty much any NHL hockey. Sure it started innocently enough with me trying to be a good wife and get some tickets for H.
 A simple 3 game pack. I didn't know any better but I bought them on the side where the Kings shoot once. Well, we upgraded to a 10 game pack on the other side of the rink, then started up closer and closer to the glass while adding up the games. Half season then heck lets go for the full season. 

I admit that I didn't fully get hockey till about 6 years ago. The Kings were not a very good team but they drafted some young, exciting players so it was nice to watch them mature as players. Then the Kings made the playoffs! And lost in the 1st round, repeat that same thing the following year. By then, I was fully hooked so here we are.

My friend Kat and I had planned to take the kids to Indio in June. We go almost every summer and it's fine. Hot, desert & we go mostly for a change of scenery. This year I thought, well maybe we should try Vegas. Kat has a timeshare there we can use, lets try that. Oh look, we can tweak our dates to coincide with the NHL Awards. I'm sooo sneaky. 

So we headed down to the Wynn with the kids, I gave them some $ and sent them off for about 3 hours while we hung out at the red carpet to get a glimpse of hockey players. It helped that the Kings won the Stanley Cup (again) too.

We met some nice fellow women hockey fans and had a great time. :) The kids endured the heat okay and managed to spend their money on LEGOs.

I won't bore you with lots of pics from the awards so here they are....

Promotion time

Summer is flying by and I'm finally able to catch up here briefly. The worst is the summer colds that hit all of us which was no fun at all. We still have lingering symptoms but the worst is over hopefully. 

We had a quick trip to Vegas with the kids (more on that later) and a restful 4th of July. It seems that our summers are getting shorter and shorter as we add more activities/adventures.








Here are my ceremony pictures at last. Our big boy Tyler is promoted from middle school. He is a whopping 5'11' and almost 15 yrs old.  

Yarny bits

A quick peek at what I've accomplished in the art of knitting.....


A new pair of socks. Blenders which has to be my all time favorite leftover/monster/vanilla socks. I love knitting patterns of all sorts/styles but these seem to fit and appeal to me the best. Plus all those socks I knit I may have given away; I have their sweet sweet leftovers to make some truly epic/wild/subtle socks. I obviously don't take the time to match them up because I'm lazy/fly by the seat of my pants/unique kind of gal.




And the extra extra bits of leftovers is being knit into hexipuffs for either a blanket/seat cushion depending on how tired/bored I get. Each hexipuff tells a story of my knitting history. I actually remember most of the socks/project I used each yarn for too. See? Nice to know my memory still works for this.

Throwback thursday

I can't keep apologizing for my lameness. Battling colds and passing them around to each other seems to be our pasttimes.

The latest trend is the TBT hashtag which stands for throw back thursday. I'm not very good nor consistent with it but here is one for today. This dates back to 2008 which is a lifetime to the kids (not me). Long story that I won't tell but H knows what I mean by this. Looks like Josh finally learned a musical instrument.
I'm sure H can come up with a better caption but like I said we all have colds.

In reality, we are obviously in Lone Pine at the McDonalds either heading up to Mammoth or home.