Knitting Jet

It took Jet about half an hour to learn how to knit.  He's doing the poke, drop, wrap, pull a loop through, and then push the old stitch off, but he's doing it consistently and did a whole row on his own without any mistakes.  He still can't quite recover from accidents and mistakes, but that's to be expected.

I think the hardest part for me was just keeping my hands off his knitting.  And he and I made a little triangular pillow about two inches a side, and he stuffed it full of cotton.  He's making a tiny stuffy and wants to sew the eyes on himself.  So he's knit himself a toy.

I'm... impressed.  I didn't think it would be that quick, but wow... he's wrapping in the right direction, getting the needle in the right way most of the time, and wrapping the correct needle most of the time.  It's been really fast.

We've had a pretty busy weekend.  Though I've spent most of it at home puttering about, wrapping gifts that have arrived, doing my homework, watching episode 5 of Bleach because I *had* to.  *laughter*  Luckly 6 left me kind of cold so I could quit for a bit.  And I happily finished all of 9-18 of Fruits Basket.  Yeah, I succumbed to the fact that I'd bought all of 9-16 from RightStuf, and while I read 9 by itself I just hurtled through the rest in one day.  And today I went to Border's with my 40% off coupon and got the last two and am now stuck until... probably March until the next.  Sigh.  So it is.  I guess I can now move onto something else.  And, luckily, amberley's shipments arrived today and I have tons of stuff to see and a few things to read, so I'm very happy.

[Added: Some possible Fruits Basket spoilers in the comments, just so you know... :-)]

The kids choir did their special thing today, and Jet sang away happily.  The teacher said that Jet should be a director someday as he was waving his hands quite happily during the practices.  He loves the music, and when the choir was singing he was pulling my hands long with his.  I'm so happy he loves music.  He loves the keyboards at school and has been going down into the basement to play with the electronic piano that I bought to long ago.  He's interested in lessons, so I should look into getting those for him.

Jet and I dyed our various bundles of silk and the colors are kind of cool and metallic.  Beautiful in a different way than wools.  The stuff also went very stiff when it dried from being wet, and I suspect that there's still enough gum from the cocoons to have it stick a bit.  The washing and dyeing helped a bit, though, and just by chaining the dried stuff it's gotten fluffy enough I can contemplate spinning it again.  I did one smaller test chain just to get my hand back into spinning raw silk again, it's different than wool, both easier and harder.  It should be fun.

The boys did all kinds of stuff without me.  Yesterday they found a big sledding hill and hit the snow while it still exists.  The temps are supposed to be in the 40's for the week during the day, so we should see some of this stuff go away.  They also went caroling with a bunch of other folks today after a soup lunch.  The church sends folks to various homes and senior centers and housing places and the folks sing for them.  The kids love doing it and people really enjoy them.  I just wasn't up to it today.  I actually got *over* a cold last week!!  I was amazed that I actually had a cold and got over it... I guess this being retired stuff really does help my health.  Whew...

Tomorrow the solar panel guys are supposed to arrive to install the panels and the boxes and stuff.  I'm looking forward to that. 

Knitting Jet

It took Jet about half an hour to learn how to knit.  He's doing the poke, drop, wrap, pull a loop through, and then push the old stitch off, but he's doing it consistently and did a whole row on his own without any mistakes.  He still can't quite recover from accidents and mistakes, but that's to be expected.

I think the hardest part for me was just keeping my hands off his knitting.  And he and I made a little triangular pillow about two inches a side, and he stuffed it full of cotton.  He's making a tiny stuffy and wants to sew the eyes on himself.  So he's knit himself a toy.

I'm... impressed.  I didn't think it would be that quick, but wow... he's wrapping in the right direction, getting the needle in the right way most of the time, and wrapping the correct needle most of the time.  It's been really fast.

We've had a pretty busy weekend.  Though I've spent most of it at home puttering about, wrapping gifts that have arrived, doing my homework, watching episode 5 of Bleach because I *had* to.  *laughter*  Luckly 6 left me kind of cold so I could quit for a bit.  And I happily finished all of 9-18 of Fruits Basket.  Yeah, I succumbed to the fact that I'd bought all of 9-16 from RightStuf, and while I read 9 by itself I just hurtled through the rest in one day.  And today I went to Border's with my 40% off coupon and got the last two and am now stuck until... probably March until the next.  Sigh.  So it is.  I guess I can now move onto something else.  And, luckily, amberley's shipments arrived today and I have tons of stuff to see and a few things to read, so I'm very happy.

[Added: Some possible Fruits Basket spoilers in the comments, just so you know... :-)]

The kids choir did their special thing today, and Jet sang away happily.  The teacher said that Jet should be a director someday as he was waving his hands quite happily during the practices.  He loves the music, and when the choir was singing he was pulling my hands long with his.  I'm so happy he loves music.  He loves the keyboards at school and has been going down into the basement to play with the electronic piano that I bought to long ago.  He's interested in lessons, so I should look into getting those for him.

Jet and I dyed our various bundles of silk and the colors are kind of cool and metallic.  Beautiful in a different way than wools.  The stuff also went very stiff when it dried from being wet, and I suspect that there's still enough gum from the cocoons to have it stick a bit.  The washing and dyeing helped a bit, though, and just by chaining the dried stuff it's gotten fluffy enough I can contemplate spinning it again.  I did one smaller test chain just to get my hand back into spinning raw silk again, it's different than wool, both easier and harder.  It should be fun.

The boys did all kinds of stuff without me.  Yesterday they found a big sledding hill and hit the snow while it still exists.  The temps are supposed to be in the 40's for the week during the day, so we should see some of this stuff go away.  They also went caroling with a bunch of other folks today after a soup lunch.  The church sends folks to various homes and senior centers and housing places and the folks sing for them.  The kids love doing it and people really enjoy them.  I just wasn't up to it today.  I actually got *over* a cold last week!!  I was amazed that I actually had a cold and got over it... I guess this being retired stuff really does help my health.  Whew...

Tomorrow the solar panel guys are supposed to arrive to install the panels and the boxes and stuff.  I'm looking forward to that.