Saturday night wool chuckin' and picture takin'

When I'm getting bored of my current knitting project I pull out this baby:

It's 50/50 merino and silk. 400m of fingering weight goodness. It's from Coolree, an Irish wool company, and the colourway is Midnight Blue. Being fairly new to wools not found in Michaels I get pretty excited over such things. My brother, the enabler, bought it for me and I've been keeping it safe in my stash until inspiration strikes and I know what the heck to do with it. Any ideas? The tag also tells me there's enough for 2 gloves or a small shawl.
Here's another shot of it. This time on my eunymus bush beside the patio. This is what I do on Saturday nights, chuck wool on random greenery in my yard and take pictures of it. Can't understand why the neighbours are moving...

And this would be my son "helping" to make this more interesting:

Let it go and knit zen mother

It's my night tonight which means no dish-washing, putting kids to bed or tidying up for this girl. Instead it's 4 solid hours of Amanda time. My plan is to do some reading and blogging and then go for a run soon. After I clean up from that I'm thinking it's time to pick up that Kirin shawl and get to knitting already. After 4 disasterous attempts to get the thing going I think I finally have it. I've knit up to row 23 and still have the right number of stitches before and after the centre stitch. It isn't a hard thing to knit. Sure there are 2 new stitches to learn but they're both based on knitting and purling. It's the concentration required to follow the pattern and make my fingers do what the paper is telling me to. (I feel this nasty feeling of Deja vu like I've said all this here before...) I can do this!

But not when I'm being distracted every 5 seconds. Moms, you know what I mean. What is so magnetic to children about a mom sitting down and pulling out her knitting?? Suddenly someone is hungry or can't find something. Suddenly their sibling is doing something that is so incredibly annoying that they have to let out an ear-piercing scream of anger and frustration right when you're trying to remember what S2K means and execute it. Sigh. But I digress.
I can feel the unsettled air upstairs. It's one of those nights when both kids are rumpled up and need to be smoothed down. It's a good night for a movie or a bike ride together. I know this sitting down here in my little corner but I'm not sure His Lordship knows it and there is sort of unspoken rule that the  parent off-duty does not intervene. Kind of like when your children are babies and Dad is spoon-feeding rice cereal into the constantly-moving infant and getting it everywhere and you know the trick to getting the food in the mouth and it's so easy why can't he see it but you can't say anything because it will put a dent in his Dad-self-esteem and that will be very bad for both of you. Kind of like that. So I have chosen to ignore everything upstairs because I can and I'm allowed to. Like Barbara Coloroso says: If it's not life-threatening, morally-threatening or unhealthy let it go.
And instead I'm going to knit and make beautiful watercolour art-cards for my Etsy shop.

(some doodles)

If you'd asked me a year ago: "do I paint" I probably would've snorted and said only walls or toes. Funny the paths life leads you on eh?

Lillies of the knitting...I mean knitting in the valley...I mean...

This is me knitting on the bus. I don't normally take the bus home as my husband and I work at the same place and are done at the same time but he needed to leave early for the annual Renewing of the IEP for our son. So I found myself on the bus. Not an altogether unpleasant experience. At least until the guy-who-doesn't-wear-deodorant climbed on and chose to sit beside me. 40 minutes of uninterrupted knitting time is pretty decadent even with anti-deodorant-guy sitting beside me.
I'm still working on my blanket. I think of it as my oatmeal blanket-plain, simple, hearty. I've been craving this kind of continuity in my knitting lately. I'm a bit spastic in my knitting projects. I usually want instant gratification in the form of fairly quick things that look like something every few rows ie socks and mittens. Afghans and sweaters until recently were a pipe dream for me. Sit and knit the same thing for months on end?! You've got to be kidding me!
The pattern is just simply knitting and purling, alternately when I feel like it. I began with 6 rows of moss stitch and then each row has 6 stitches of moss stitch on either end. When I get a minute I'll update my Ravelry and post a link if you're interested.

The lillies of the valley are blooming in my garden right now. I've always wanted lillies of the valley in my garden and one year one lone plant appeared. Each year I get more and more. The smell is heavenly. Also in my jam jar vase are sprigs of lavendar, violet, primula (?) and a mystery purple flower that I don't know the name of. Yes I normally decorate my table with paintbrushes.
Here's hoping your day is full of little unexpected pleasures too :)

Of knitted mice and the real thing.

I mentioned last week that we were off to open up the cottage on the May 24th long weekend. It was a great weekend but it took me a week to recover from my weekend and get back into things again. There's always the lack of sleep to contend with. I've been sleeping at our cottage since I was a baby but it's still a strange place and a strange bed (that bed! why are cottage beds so awful??). Then the computer announced it's memory was full up and it refused to upload another picture no matter how much I talked nicely to it (or swore). Fast-forward a week later and I think I'm all sorted out as is the computer and here are some nice pictures for you to feast your eyes on.

We crammed 2 kids, 5 adults, including a pregnant lady and all the associated groceries into our very small cottage during a cold weekend. This works so long as the kids are able to dash around outside most of the time but not so great when we're all sardined inside trying to stay warm. But we persevered and I managed to escape for some solo canoeing time.

(sort of an odd selfie. Difficult to accomplish while swatting flies and 

trying to keep the canoe out of the weeds)

 I knit 1.5 little grey mouse mittens.

 It complemented the little gifts left behind over the winter by some real life mice who apparently had a party inside while the cold winds blew outside. I don't mind sharing but I draw the line at vermin. I stitched up some more of the ill-fated Jackaroo. I do love that thing. Maybe I mentioned that before...

Planting-knitting-running-Gratitude Sunday

Joining Taryn today at Wooly Moss Roots for Gratitude Sunday...
After a glorious weekend last weekend at our cottage I had a hard time getting back into the swing of pretty much everything this week and rather than fight it I chose to just go with it and be kind to myself. I thought coming back with Gratitude Sunday was fitting. Sometimes you just have to go back to the basics and slowly add the things that feed your soul and eject the things that just take your energy and give nothing back. So here I am :)
Today I have knit some and gardened some and read some. I went for a run (4 days in a row this week-a small miracle to be sure).
Today I am grateful for:
~May days that feel like summer- 25C, breezy and sunny.

~Time spent digging and planting in my garden. The peas are climbing, the potatoes are all up, the lettuce is all green and red and delicious-looking. I planted the carrots and thought about planting kale (too late I suspect), cucumbers and beans but didn't get much farther than that.
~Kids playing outside all afternoon and coming in sweaty and happy
~Dinner under the maple tree
~Time to read and knit on another little grey mitten and work on my Jackaroo sweater.

(The little purple flowers are all over our lawn and they're too pretty to dig out)

(My neighbours must think I'm crazy chucking random knitting projects on bushes and taking pictures)

~One side of my Jackaroo is all sewn up and I'm well on my way to being done the other side. I tried it on and it's definitely too small. Sigh. It will fit the Em-ster perfectly and I did promise her a sweater...
~A good run where I ran more than I walked.
~Using up leftovers in my fridge to make strawberry freezer jam and chicken soup. It's good to be thrifty.
Coming back from my run I saw the most beautiful, peaceful thing. A couple of people were at the end of their driveway making enormous bubbles that floated and shimmered before they popped. It looked like Tai Chi the way they were slowly forming and releasing the bubbles. The best part was that they appeared to be doing it for their own amusement as there weren't any kids around and they were probably in their 40's. How great is that?!