Olympic Ugh!

No, the Olympics have been great!  But I have made some progress on my Ravelympic project over this past week, and now I’ve decided that it’s too big.  Since I gained 10-15 pounds after finishing residency, I figured I shouldn’t always be making the XS size anymore.  The S size would have given me zero ease, which I thought would work fine for this pattern.  But I just tried it on, and it’s really too big.  Plus, I’ve used an entire skein already, and this is all I have done.

I can’t imagine finishing it with only 4 skeins, as specified in the pattern.

So, a week’s worth of knitting, to be frogged!!  😦  I doubt I’ll be able to finish it before the Olympics are over, but I will restart with the XS size and press on anyway.

As for my little goldfinch family, I haven’t seen them all week.  I think that in the 3 days I was away from the office, the babies learned to fly, and the whole family left!  The nest has been empty.  I wish them the best, and hope they come back to make more babies next year!

 

Olympic knitting, and blueberry picking!

Call me crazy, but I signed up for the Ravelympics, where you start and complete a project during the Olympics.  The project I chose is the Lacy Little Top, and I’m using the recommended Allhemp3, which is fingering weight hemp.  When I swatched for the project I had difficulty getting gauge small enough, so I got advice on the Ravelry forums (and the yarn company’s website) to soak the yarn in warm water with hair conditioner before using it.  After that, I was able to get gauge with a 2.75mm needle, 2 sizes smaller than recommended.  I got a late start because I couldn’t find the darn pattern during the opening ceremonies, turns out I put it on my shelf, and just didn’t think I’d be organized enough to put it there in the first place!  So here’s what I have so far.  It’s a nice, easy lace pattern.

Yesterday, we took Tim blueberry picking at Evergreen Berry Farm.  He was really excited because he loves to eat blueberries, and he had lots of fun picking them!  Grandpa showed him what to do.

Checking his bucket:

Like father, like son:

The berries were beautiful.

And delicious!  I found that some of the best berries were down low, where not many people bother to stoop down to look.  Aren’t these perfect?

For more pictures, here’s the Flickr set.

As a bonus, here’s another Tim creation, this time with Grandpa’s help.

He loves to make “flowers” with his blocks, and comes up with new designs all the time!

He loves shapes and designs, and was drawing what looked like a triangle yesterday.  But when I commented on it he corrected me, “it’s not a triangle, Mommy, it’s a parallelepiped!”