Tour de Fleece

Natalie,

So I jumped the gun on Tour de Fleece. While I knew your birthday was the 28th and the Tour started on the 29th, somehow in my mind, the 28th became the 29th after I wished you happy birthday. All of my day 1 spinning was done the day before. Whoops.  The good news is that I spun an ounce in 1 day.  Instead I chose to not spin Saturday to make the same number of days as everyone else. If only there were more hours in the day.

Loving the Roadbug

I did some more knitting even though I promised I would slow it down some.  The gauge is crazy on the Abotanicity sweater.  Crazy  tell you! Who gets 52 stitches/40 rounds on size 3 needles in k2p1 ribbing?  I'm at half that! I would like to point out that I didn't make a gauge swatch either so I literally am knitting this on the fly and making adjustments as I go.  What I did was knit until Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters said to divide for the sleeves. Easy enough to do because my increases according to the original pattern make a clean, visual cue for the sleeves caps. From there I kept knitting until the ribbing covered my bust line plus a few inches. Then, I finally started the lace.  After about chart repeats the pattern is getting easier to follow. I still need to check the chart every other row but it's getting easier! I am so tempted to stop on the lace, leaving it on the needles and begin the sleeves. After all sleeves take FOREVER!!! No really, but that's how they feel because the rest of the sweater is knit and all that's left are sleeves... ugh. If I start the sleeves, I can't take it to work any more; I'll need to take something else. Hmm, I do have Darling Niece's Christmas mittens on the needles right now. The one needs a thumb and the other needs everything but a cuff.  Possible.

Lace complete with pretty stitch markers

I'm loving the new job.  The division manager stopped buy and asked on Friday what everyone was working on and then said when we got to a stopping point, take off.  WAHOO!!! At home reading about welding. Of course I may start the sleeves just to do something other than just ready very dry, very boring welding books published by the American Welding Society. It's not the books fault, author's fault, just very dry subject matter written like a text book. I'm refusing to read upside down for work material. It was bad enough I had to do it sometimes for college just to stay awake through the texts. 

Books I already looked through for welding details

On the home front, I am a genius! The boys refused to nap Saturday.  Eventually (3 hours after I tucked them in) I ended up removing DS1 from the shared bedroom and put him down in my bed. I check on both boys after 5 minutes and they were out cold. After 2 hours, I don't think they moved an inch from where they finally fell asleep. I must confess that I cheated at dinner. They had peanut butter sandwiches and the proper way to eat a PB sandwich is to pull it apart, eat the peanut butter by using your fingers and driving a choo-choo through the sandwich. I have no idea how I'm going to remove all the peanut butter from the toy train's undercarriage beyond driving it all over my carpet. 

Choo-Choos  like Peanut Butter Too.