In order to move things around and make room for wee one, hubby is giving up his office and I've got to pare down my stash. (Wee one will be housing my stash in a corner of her soon-to-be-room: pretty colors, soft yarn - I think it'll look nice.) Which means I'm going through a major major major stash reorg and purge. I've taken a long hard look at what has settled at the bottom of my stash (oddly, there's a lot of green at the bottom of my stash) and asked myself what I am likely to knit and what I can part with. The things I can part with I'm offering up for sale here! There's lots of sweaters' worth of great yarns and some smaller lots of lovelies too - all at bargain prices! Here's a peek:

This is the link to my sale page with all the prices. You can leave me a comment here or send me an email letting me know which item you want and I'll sell the yarn on a first come, first serve basis. PayPal or check should be fine. I'll try to update the list as things get sold, so you know what's gone and what's still available.

And there's also a grab bag of (almost) freebies!! Peek:

Here's a link to all the grab bag items. You can put your name into the grab bag almost-giveaway by leaving a comment saying you want to be in the giveaway, and in a couple of days, I'll grab a name and grab a bag and send each thing out to its winner. (I'm only asking for a couple bucks for shipping!)

Who would have thought that getting rid of yarn could be so much fun?!

(4:30 pm update: I'm working through the initial batch of emails and will update the sale page shortly. I'll change items to "hold" that someone has already asked for. Once I receive payment, I'll mark 'em "sold". This is so exciting!)

(One week later: Looks like all the yarn is pretty definitely spoken for at this point. I'll let you know if any sales don't go through, but for now, I'll be closing the sale and the list for the grab bag. Grab bag pulls should happen this weekend, so fingers crossed!)

Congratulations (and some yarn, of course) going out to the following...

WWLAHKG holiday knit-along knit giftie winners:

Amber (4 of 4) - winner of Hipknits silk
Jennifer (10 of 10) - winner of Knitpicks pumpkin wool
Jolene (3 of 3) - winner of Knitpicks Essential sock yarn
Carrie (8 of 8) - winner of Regia sock yarn

"Make Room for Baby" grab bag winners:

Lisa - winner of Classic Elite Gatsby
Carole (email at cs.com) - winner of Phildar Lambswool
Sarah - winner of Classic Elite Bazic
Janelle - winner of Spotlight Cotton
Davy (email at gmail.com) - winner of Fixation sock yarn
Lorraine - winner of Filatura 501
Amy (email at hotmail.com) - winner of Online 157 Tessa
Tammy - winner of Rowan handknit dk
Allie - winner of Lana Grossa Cat
Sally (email at comcast.net) - winner of Knit 1 Crochet 2 Fleece
Oiyi - winner of Sirdar Denim
Wanda - winner of Lurex Shimmer

Send me your addresses by email! (Psst, my email address is in the sidebar.) Grab bag winners, you can send me two dollars to help with shipping at my PayPal account (same as my email).

And speaking of winners, the boys' nosewarmers are a huge hit! Every day that it's below freezing (like today) the boys insist on wearing them on our walk to school.

The crossing guards and the teachers at school all love them. Everyone smiles when they see the boys coming with their "nosehats" on!

Today is Red Sox opening day and everyone at the boys' school is wearing their Red Sox gear! (Note to self: Get wee one some Red Sox gear.) (Note to master webmaster: Do not even think of sending some sort of Yankee onesie up here for her!) They're collecting money at the school for the Jimmy Fund, the Red Sox long-time official charity supporting Dana Farber cancer research and the Jimmy Fund Children's Clinic. The boys brought in their dollars and wore their shirts proudly. And baby L and I just finished reading Faithful (the Stephen King, Stewart O'Nan book about the 2004 season when the Sox won the World Series) while nursing, so we're psyched! Go Sox!

And since it's opening day, how 'bout I open up sockapalooza sign-ups later today? My master webmaster has a few small changes to make (hope he'll still help after the Yankees comment above!) and then we should be able to go live later this evening. Don't worry, sign-ups will be open for at least a day, probably two, so you don't have to keep refreshing this page all day long. But if you do, maybe just consider going on over to the Jimmy Fund site and giving 'em a couple of bucks to help fight cancer, 'kay?

A rare weekend post from me because I have got to tell you about my latest yarn store experience. Not because it was a good one. In fact, I have never before been treated so rudely in a yarn store. And as yarn store owners are notorious for their unfriendliness, that's saying something.

visit Concord, but don't get any closer than this to this store

The store in question is Needle Arts of Concord (in Concord, MA) which is closing after 30 years. I'd never been to Concord - didn't even know where it was really - but a friend who recently moved there mentioned that she got a postcard from the store announcing their closing and a 50% off sale. She said it was sort of sad that she hadn't had much opportunity to support them and encouraged others to check them out, especially as they were having the big sale. You got it! We love to make local yarn crawls. (Why in fact, just last month we visited three stores on the North Shore and none of them were even having sales!)

Bad idea. When the owner realized that we were not from Concord and had not been valued customers for the last 30 years (pardon me for not living in Concord and for having half a dozen other awesome knitting stores much closer to me), she proceeded to complain to her shop pals, within hearing distance of course, that she couldn't believe that other people were showing up and why did she bother paying all that money to send postcards to her customers. She asked me how we heard about the sale and I explained about the friend in Concord who recommended our visiting and said that we wanted to support the store. She replied 'take advantage of the sale is more like it.' What? If you're selling yarn and I want to buy it, I'm taking advantage of you?

Furthermore, there were no prices, so when it came time to total up purchases, we had no choice but to trust that she did give us the discount. And I'm not convinced. I work at a yarn store. So did my friend. We know prices. Not that we actually bought much. After she'd repeated her complaint about the outsiders showing up to the third or fourth shop insider, we started putting things back, leaving it on the shelves for the "real customers". Then, after we'd waited at the register for a significant amount of time and finally politely asked her to ring us up, she began to say sarcastic things like "oh, that's a big purchase there," and "that was worth the trip." And she finished off by insincerely wishing us luck with the Friday traffic back home. Wow.

We were so confused by her attitude (did she want us to leave or did she want us to buy more yarn?) and shocked by her outright rudeness that we really had no idea how to respond. We were never anything but perfectly friendly, even when she groused about our very good babies getting "cranky" (yes, I did have to put wee one's binky back in her mouth two or three times, so audible sounds did actually escape her lips). To be honest, although I really want to say snarky things like 'no wonder she's closing' or tell all my friends to go to the store and announce that they heard there was a big sale, I still feel so taken off guard by her inexplicable meanness that I can't work up much outrage. She was the one who was filled with outrage, spite, something bad. Maybe because she had to close, maybe because she paid too much for those customer postcards, maybe because she'd just realized that she should have said it was a "customer only" sale, or maybe because the trials of running a store had killed the joy she used to feel for doing needlework and sharing it with others. No idea, but it was definitely bigger than us. She was seriously bitter.

Don't go there.

Not wanting to let her ruin our little trip, we made our way over to the local quilting shop our friend told us was just across the street.

visit Concord, start quilting!

Quilter's Way is a great store - beautiful fabrics, very baby-friendly (and our babies were actually cranky in this store), man, I wish I was a quilter and not a knitter! Johanna picked up some fat eighths to make some baby shoes and I dreamed of someday becoming a person with the patience and skills to actually make a quilt.

We finished off our trip with wonderful eats from Concord Teacakes and walked by the needle arts store one last time on our way back to the car. There were great samples in the window, including the funny little Otto Owl that I just finished knitting. And I could only think, 'what a shame'.

Wee one in her Brooklyn General onesie asking me, 'when are you going to make me that denim pinafore, mommy?'

And here she is asleep in her swing cuddling with big brother B's little blankie. Lesson for big brother: if you don't put it away, the baby's going to think it's hers.

Big brother B comes to me and says, 'mom, I'm making a lego contraption and need some yarn'. I think we can manage that....

His little Lego man needed a parachute, so we grabbed some yellow Opal sock yarn to attach him to the tissue parachute. Then Lego man got popped into the contraption, that got hung on some more yarn (dk cotton this time) draped across the room and when the contraption hits a certain point on the line, out he falls through the trap door.

Oh yes, we're all about the yarn here.

The boys!

trying to decide who's taller

A lot of you have wondered where the boys are these days. Never fear, they're running around doing all the things that 1st grade boys do. That of course means that they haven't really intersected my knitting/crafting life that much of late. That is, until Monday when S comes down the stairs while we're packing up for sports camp and says, "mommy, I have to show you this interesting thing I saw in the Highlights magazine." I'm thinking maybe it's some article on bears or bees or one of those hidden picture puzzles to solve. Nope.

Him: "Look, here it says CRAFTS."
Me, clearly not getting it: "Uh-huh."
Him: "Look, you take a milk carton and cut it and glue paper to it and some ribbon..."

And with the enthusiasm usually reserved for picking out new Lego sets, he explains.

Him: "It's a pretty container - we have to make one!"
Me, incredulous: "Okay."
Him: "I can put things in it. We have paper. Do we have a milk carton? Can we make it now?"

Whaddaya gonna do? The boy wants to craft. And so we made it.

B didn't want to feel like he was missing out on the fun but we were out of half-gallon milk jugs and he's not quite as into the crafting as his brother, so he just had me do one of the other crafts in the book for him.

Also back...

emli!

Yes, without warning, wee one's suitcase suddenly showed up again and she's been wearing all her best little clothes and her enjoying her favorite toys again.

It's good to be back.

One week of the boys in camp and instead of knitting, I spent all my time on ravelry.

I'm usually way out of the loop on new cool things like this. I had almost no idea what ravelry was and even now that I'm in, I don't really know what the hell I'm doing. But I'm having fun! At first, I wasn't sure that it'd be something I would really find useful since I'm not an organize-my-stash-in-Excell or keep-track-of-projects-on-my-pda type of person. (I don't have time for that, I'm knitting, for goodness sakes!) But ravelry is just so darned easy to use, especially coming in at this point when there are thousands of patterns and yarns already added. It's just a matter of entering your own project info and uploading a picture and, bob's-your-uncle, you've got 53 projects in ravelry!

If you're playing around on ravelry this weekend, come say hi.

First, we found our way out of a maze. We made our annual trip out to the Davis Mega Maze to get lost and have some fun!

Wee one was amazing for the two and a half hour hunt for the exit.

We love this place. If anyone out there is a Boston local and hasn't visited this awesome corn maze before, I really recommend it. They make it especially fun to do with the kids.

Speaking of the kids, the very next day the boys learned how to ride bikes! They got bicycles with training wheels for their birthday back in July.

Suddenly last week, B started saying that he wanted a bicycle. I said, 'you got a bicycle for your birthday.' He said, 'nooooo, I mean one with two wheels.' I explained that the little wheels on his bike were training wheels that could come off when he was ready to ride without them. He said, 'I don't want to wait for that. I just want a bicycle now.' I think he thought the training wheels were like baby teeth or something, falling off when "it was time." I kept explaining that daddy could take them off anytime and he kept insisting that he couldn't wait. So hubby got out the wrench and voila, B gets a bike. After a couple of falls, he was off like he'd been doing it forever.

S couldn't let his brother have all the glory, so he took a few tumbles and then set off on his own.

And while all the boys were out with the bikes, I was at home making friends with magic loop. It's not like we were enemies, but I hadn't ever warmed to it. I like my dpns. I like doing socks on dpns. A couple of years ago, everyone talked about the magic loop like it was some sort of great revelation. I tried it and there was no epiphany, so I went back to my dpns. As I started wee one's pinwheel jacket on dpns - it's knit in the round from the center out - it was looking like crap on a stick (well, crap on three sticks actually!). So I snuck into the (napping) baby's room to get different dpns, but in the dark all I managed to find in the right size was a long addi circular. Desperate times and all that. I gave it a shot.

Hey Mikey, she likes it!

I might even consider doing socks this way. As long as I can get me some of those fab Addi Lace needles! Hee, hee.

Oh yeah, and then I finished the pinwheel sweater.

Yes, it's all done, (the other sleeve too, you skeptics!), it fits and wee one likes it. It's blocking now, so I'll see you tomorrow with all the finished pictures.

That's enough for one weekend, don't you think?

Ready for school...

but is it ready for them?!

Where you know that the only thing that will cheer you up is knitting a silly wig hat for your baby?

Almost done and I can barely stop laughing long enough to finish it!

Server troubles.... and now back to our regularly scheduled programming, A Baby tooth Story.

The dentithst took out my front tooththh yethterday. It wath an extra tooththhh that wath in the way of my big boy toothth. Whoopths, did I just sthpit on you? Ththhhorry, it wath an aththhident.

Today I was hoping to show you some pics of a new finished project or maybe share a little review of a big new knitting book I've been enjoying, but then life got in the way. An after-school playground accident, a trip to the ER, one brave little boy and one worn-out mommy means there'll be no knitting post today. But we do have stitches - three to be exact!

B is back at school telling his story to all his little friends and I'm recovering at home with wee one, some crappy tv and a big bag of hershey kisses. Knitting to resume tomorrow.

The boys couldn't be happier. They stayed up to watch some of the game every night of the ALCS as the Sox came back against "the Clevelands" and the World Series, sweeping "the Colorados". Poor B though was so tired last night that we couldn't wake him up to see any of the game. We seriously could not wake him. (They'd spent about two hours yesterday afternoon playing baseball on the playground.) B finally woke up at about 5am in a sleepy daze, crying - not so much because he'd missed the game, but because he felt it wasn't fair that S had seen some of the game and he hadn't. Twins! Once he was fully awake and understood that the Sox had won, he cheered up pretty quick. And both of them were all smiles on their way to school, where they met up with about 500 other grinning kids wearing Red Sox shirts and caps. A big thanks to the Red Sox for all the smiles!

No time to knit today - I'm off to buy more Red Sox gear. The boys requested one Lowell and one Big Papi shirt, so wee one and I are off to get 'em. Woo hoo!!

Are handknit sweaters pouring out of your cedar chest like here at my house? Can you barely close your sock drawer because it is stuffed to the brim with handknit socks? When do you say I have enough? And how can you stop making them when you love knitting and you love the beautiful new fibers and colors that come out every year? How much is too much and what do you do with it all?

In my quilting post from yesterday, I mentioned that I liked the idea of making small mini-quilts (no bigger than, let's say, 2 foot square) because I could try out new techniques and new fabrics that catch my eye without spending scores of hours on each quilt and without blanketing the entire house in, well, blankets. A commenter asked what I would do with a bunch of mini-quilts and suggested that normal sized quilts really are much more useful. It's certainly a valid question and I agree that in theory bigger quilts are more practical, just like a knitted sweater is more practical than a swatch. BUT in real life (and in a home already filled with boys, toys, a baby, and, oh yeah, a ton of yarn) once you get past a certain number of sweaters, socks, or quilts, I might argue that each additional one isn't really that useful anymore. In fact, it's kinda in the way.

I could wear any one of my sweaters or socks on any given day and, if I made a dozen lap-sized quilts, I could, anytime I'm chilly, reach for any one of them. But what do I do with ALL of them? A mini-quilt could be hung up like a picture. Yes, all of our walls are, admittedly, already covered with pictures, but I could switch some of them out from time to time. And storing a dozen mini-quilts is way more imaginable than storing a dozen lap- or bed-sized ones. Heck, if I could find a way to legitimately hang my knitting up on the walls, I'd do it! (Shhh, don't tell the knitting police, but I already break all the handknit rules and hang up some of my sweaters in the closet.)

As my cedar chest has filled up, my knitting has changed. I've found it very hard to complete an adult-sized garment in the last year. What I have been very successful at making are baby items and stuffed animals. And I've enjoyed them immensely! I've gotten to try out new things, use different yarns (some that I'd never wear!) and storing the items has been much easier to manage. I do still earmark very special yarns for sweaters and plan to make more, but I don't want to make, you know, TOO many more. My thought about the mini-quilts is just the same. I do want to make full-sized quilts (for the sofa, for the bed...), but to try out new things and new fabric that I just have to have (even though I already have plenty, or dare I say too much), I think the quilt wall-hanging might be a good option. For me.

But maybe it's just me. I REALLY enjoy knitting. (Those caps don't come any where near enough to expressing how much I enjoy knitting. Is it possible to enjoy knitting too much?) And I'm REALLY enjoying the quilting. (Same really, same question.) But I just have to take one look at that sock drawer and know that that many quilts is going to be a problem! Does anyone else out there have too many socks? too many sweaters? too many quilts? We love to make these things, so what to do?

Oh yes, it's that time of year again when little German kids put their boots out before they go to bed and wake up to find goodies left for them by Saint Nikolaus.

I couldn't resist taking the picture this year with wee one's little "boot"ies between the boys'. Awwwww.

(Actual knitting post to come later....)

We're trapped inside while the snow is coming down gangbusters outside.

Left hand on blue. That's blue, wee one. Oh, heck, wee one on yellow.

And who says we can't play ball inside?

Well, I'll be getting nothing done today!