Learning to Knit

Not even a month ago a few ladies decided to start a knitting club on Facebook. Apparently all sorts of these clubs exist. Most often know as a "Stitch and Bitch" club. Even my mum knew of this lovely little nickname. Somehow along the way I decided that I would join up in this little venture. I already had a few sets of needles that once belonged to my lovely Grandma Edith (rest her soul) so I figured I just needed to buy some basic yarn, see how it goes, then take it from there.

So far I am hooked -if I were crocheting that would be a good pun;). 

I did a lot of practice and tearing out and practice and tearing out. Nothing really came from my first attempts. I just wasn't sure where to go with it. One of the ladies though suggested we do a KAL (knit along). She chose a very easy and basic pattern (thankfully). Basically just knit a ton of rows that were about 20 stitches wide. Then stitch your ends together. Do a snazzy fold over. Wrap with yarn and voila, you now have a homemade headwrap/headwarmer. 

I have so far made one for myself (matching hand warmers are on the horizon) 

as well as a little one for Evelyn. 

I am also working on some as Christmas gifts. You can find the exact pattern for this little number here.

So now I have an account on ravelry.com. I have seen a few patterns on there that I would love to try. I need more practice and I also need to extend out of my comfort zone of head warmers, lol. 

I have also opened an account with a very intriguing site called knitpicks.com. I have yet to place an order but once the craziness of Christmas has passed I will be on it. I am really hoping for some Christmas money to fund my new habit. There are some luxuriuous looking yarns that I would love to try and I for sure want some new needles, more specifically these and these. 

I have also added a new Pinterest board. You can check out my Stitch B*tch board to see some of the projects and accessories and yarns that I really want to try. 

If you would like to try your hand at knitting I highly recommend knittinghelp.com. There are a lot of great how to/tutorial videos there. So far I have learned how to cast on, knit stitch, and bind off. Next up is the purl stitch. 

That is where I am with it now. I am a very green newbie beginner but I am finding it addicting. I keep saying, "just five more rows" whenever I have to do something else. I've also begun to master that balance that is knitting while breastfeeding. Once I get my courage up I may even pop down to a local yarn co-op. 

And with that...I must go knit. The Christmas countdown is on and I have gifts to finish. 

A Whole Lotta Random

Good Day! And indeed it is a good day. While my thoughts have been abducted by some family drama as of recent and interrupting some blogging I also have many things going on. Busy doesn't begin.

I do have a fun project coming up that I am really looking forward to blogging about. It involves nature, 52 weeks, and 4 seasons. All will be revealed shortly (as in only several more days until the summer solstice shortly).

There are a few things I promised to blog about in the past that I just wasn't able to get to it. Some of those things now even seem redundant or irrelevent to post on now (Easter anyone?). Some of those things, like the Brtiax B Ready stroller are still very deserving of a post and still pending. I hope to get rolling on some of those very soon. I'm thinking some videos demos and reviews are also in order.

So here is a short update:

Things were quite busy around home the last few weeks. For one, Daddy was away for 9 days on a renovation job out of town. Yup, just me, three kidlets, the dog and the cat in our small abode. It had some ups and downs but we felt is was a great experience. It was also great practice for those times when Daddy has to go away to rock and we stay home. We had some great routines and patterns and I gained A LOT of confidence in myself. Dare I say I look forward to a few more occasions where I can dig in my heels and be both parents (but not in a long term sort of way). There is a definite dynamic shift when Daddy is gone and in short doses I like it. Don't get me wrong though. WE MISSED DADDY SOOOOOO MUCH!!!!

A big development around here is Max is potty trained. Max is what I would figure to be a later potty trainer. He is almost 3 1/2 and we didn't give it a good go until the last few weeks and I ran out of pull ups and refused to buy more. There have been many pee accidents and many poo accidents but we are currently hitting 80% success right now. I'm pretty trained myself now to watch the clock and every 3 to 4 hours get him to the potty. This past week though he has taken some initiative to go on his own, only had a few dribble accidents, wakes dry every morning, returns home from outings dry and has even had some pees out and about.

Other than that it is pretty much business as usual. Daddy is back from out of town and back to regular band rehearsals and long hard work days. While he is busy working I am busy taking care of the home front and every single thing that implies (finances, homeschool, kids, cleaning, cooking......). I did happen upon a very intriguing blog while Daddy was away which I have to admit gave me some great insight into the splitting of responsibilities we do have. Take a moment and pop over to http://womenlivingwell.org/. If you have a penchant for the 1950 husband/wife dynamic, like to homeschool and love the Lord then you will love this blog.

On the band front...they had their video footage shooting almost a month ago now and hopefully in a few weeks the video will be ready and be sent to the booking agencies (I am crossing EVERYTHING!). I am using every piece of The Secret I know to make this happen. That band does their part and I do mine. We are dreaming every day (and night) about international travel, flying with the kids, exposing our to the world, new tastes and new sounds.

Well there it is for now. Sorry for the shwack load of random thoughts. I just wanted to quickly write something out. Make sure people don't think I have forgotten them. In fact I guiltily think about how I should write more ALL THE TIME! I even have lots of good ideas. Getting the time? That is the ticket.

Thanks for stopping in today. Have a happy day :)

Discovering Tea

I have always enjoyed a nice cup of tea. I started drinking it as most do, as a child. I drank what my mother had on hand. As I grew older I dabbled in a few basic loose teas and then settled on liking earl grey. My preferred choice. On occasion a chai would be nice as well. Sadly my loose tea connection closed down and regular bagged tea became the norm. Today that is no longer the case.

Enter in my friend Erin. She introduced me to a whole new world of loose tea. Erin also happens to be a tea genius. She knows A LOT about tea. What she doesn’t know she will be sure to research it and let you know. I look forward to her weekly videos on everything from How To Make Matcha to Proper Cookie Dunking Technique. I highly recommend that anyone with an interest in tea check her out and be sure participate on her highly active Facebook Page or even find her on Twitter.

Now, back to tea. It began with a nice stash from Davids Tea (where Erin opened my eyes to the ways of the loose leaf). I have also recently added some Teaopia. I am hoping to try some Tealish soon and if I’m feeling saucy I’m going to order in some pricy teas from Bellocq (a place I read about in the most recent issue of Martha Stewart Living).

Needless to say I have been doing a lot of experimenting and sampling. Finding what I like and what I certainly do not like. One of my recent experiments was purchasing the Kids Tea Pack from Teaopia. My children have already enjoyed many of the teas I have tried so I thought getting them some tea just for them would be nice. I mentioned it to Erin who asked me if I would like to review them for her blog. Without hesitation I said yes. 

The last few days have been filled with taste testing four different flavors marketed as kids tea. We tried them as hot tea and also as iced tea. 

I will say here that while my intention was tea for the kids I may have found some new flavours for myself as well. If you would like to read my full review please head on over and visit my friend Erin and check it out.

Pinning with Purpose

In my last blog post I mentioned a site called pinterest. Well, let me tell you a little bit more.

I absolutely love this site. The ideas and the creativity and inspiration just jumps off the screen and grabs my core. It says pin me, copy me, craft me, believe me.

What exactly is pinterest? It is basically a collection of online bulletin boards where you can "pin" pretty much any picture from any site. Not long prior to being introduced to this wonderful gem I had actually gotten into creating a vision board (a poster where you put pictures of the things you want...it's a "The Secret" kind of thing). This site couldn't have come along at a better time for me. I now don't have to print and cut and paste. I'm not limited to only things I can print. I can add, delete and change boards and pins as I see fit.

It's much more than a vision board too. I have boards for but limited to the following: My diaper stash, family trips, Christmas, ideas for the kids, household tips, health and wellness. I could go on and on. I pin things I have, things I want, things that inspire me.

I find though that I don't just randomly pin. Everything I pin, I pin for  reason. It's a recipe I want to try, an art project with the kids to delve into, a verse that inspires me to be a better person. I pin with purpose. I pin what is important to me. I pin what resonates a chord in me.

So far I am getting quite the collection of pins. I have shuffled things around. Merged boards, split boards and deleted boards.

It's also a great way to organize myself. For example, I've been buying a crap load of teas and wish to keep them straight so I pinned them all. Take into account too all the amazing pins of organization ideas.

All the other topics alone this site as been an invaluable resource for me as a home school parent. I have found so many wonderful teaching tools and activities to do with the boys.

Most of the photos so far it seems come from blogs. Pictures that people have posted when talking about what they have been up to. There are some seriously creative people out there and I hope a lot of it rubs off on me. I have even discovered some fun and new blogs to read from following pins back to their source.

If you would like an invite to this fantastic sight please comment with your email. Don't worry there will be no spam type emails. I don't know how many invites I can send but I will send as many as I can. I think everyone would benefit from this great site.