New Words this Week

New words: Wiggles (this may not be new, but it's new to me), cracker.
I heard that she told her teacher "Not nice." I wonder where she's heard that before. As I've mentioned before, Lorelei is a biter. She's not afraid to hurt you to get what she wants.

Words we're working on: bird, cat (we know this one but don't use it appropriately), mouth, hair.

Words she said but probably doesn't understand: tooth, two and two (as in two balls, two strikes), please. She's starting to repeat everything, I really need to start watching my language.

I know there are more words for each category this week, but I can't remember them.

The end of Gilmore?

The Palladinos have left Gilmore Girls. I feel like my puppy just died.

Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Dan were responsible for creating Gilmore Girls and keeping it going for these last six years. Now if there is a seventh year (which looks likely since Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel have another year on their contracts) it will go on without the Palladinos. This can't be a good thing. This will be like the West Wing when Aaron Sorkin left. As much as I want the Gilmores to go on forever - it may be time to let it go. I'm going to go cry now.

Random Thursday

• I now know the names of all 4 Wiggles. Greg, Murray, Jeff and Anthony. I've been playing the Wiggles nonstop because I think it's cute how Lorelei dances to the music and says Wiggles. It's one of the longest words she knows.
• I've gotten an inch completed of the neck of my Picovoli, 30 inches of Irish Hiking scarf and 11 inches of the Wavy scarf. One day I'll take pictures of my WIPs.
• Flickr - Somehow I've already used up all of my free downloading this month. Not really a problem (since I haven't taken any pictures anyway). But if I did take pictures it would make it harder to blog from work.
• I'm tempted to frog the sock from hell. It's caused so much grief that I don't want to touch it. And I'm still not sure if it will fit anyway. I'm thinking about trying toe-up, but with another yarn. I love the sock from hell yarn and I think it will make great stripy socks that I want to wear, but I don't want to think about right now.
• I started my Picovoli on Friday. This is definitely my biggest and most complicated project to date. I'm about an inch into the neck after several hours of work. I hope I'm able to finish it before summer is over - I really want to wear it. I just learned knit into front and back. I think it looks ok, but I need to get a little more completed to be able to really tell how it looks.
• It's going to be 80 degrees today, but my office is so cold that I have to wear my jacket. I wonder how long I'll be able to feel my fingers.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Saturday was my 31st birthday. After all of the changes that were happening last year at this time (new state, new job, tiny baby), my life looks a little boring. But then I look at Lorelei and remember that it will be a long time before my life is boring again. Every day she's doing something new, saying something new, or trying something new. My little daredevil is going to keep life interesting for quite a while.

So now I'm "in my 30's." Maybe because my life has quieted down, it seems like a bigger milestone than 30.

Anyway, happy birthday to me. Now I need to go buy myself something special - like yarn!

A birthday meme

In honor of my birthday Saturday I thought this would be fun.

From Cara:
Do a Wikipedia search of your birthdate, minus the year; list three interesting events, three people who were born, and three people who died on that day.

Three (or four) Events:

1. 1755 - Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language published in London.
2. 1912 - The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks at about 2:20 a.m. after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic almost three hours earlier.
3. 1923 - Insulin first became generally available for use by diabetics.
4. 1947 - Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team, breaking that sport's color line.

Three Births:

1. 1452 - Leonardo da Vinci, Italian artist (d. 1519)
2. 1707 - Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician (d. 1783)
3. 1959 - Emma Thompson, English actress

Three Deaths:

1. 1865 - Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (b. 1809)
2. 1998 - Pol Pot, Cambodian dictator (b. 1925)
3. 2001 - Joey Ramone, American musician and singer (The Ramones) (b. 1951)

A Stupid Thing

Lately, all of my knitting stories seem to include the phrase "and then I did a stupid thing...".

I finally started the wavy scarf for Lorelei's teacher over the weekend. And I LOVE the wavy pattern, it's a lot of fun to knit. So I bought a ball winder over the weekend to wind my yarn - after I started knitting with it. After I had already gotten it tangled up into a nice mess. Long story short - it took me about 24 hours to unmess and wind my ball.

I really like the ball winder - I think it will be really fun when I don't have tangled yarn.

New Words this Week

This is the first in what may become a regular post. Lorelei is 16 months now and starting to talk like crazy. Her favorite words are No, baby, mommy, daddy, and dog.

New this week: mine, cup, all right, Elmo. She also said bear and some other words, but I don't think she really understands those yet. She usually calls all animals dog so I think it will take a little time before she understands that there are different animals.

In other Lorelei news, we bought the Wiggles DVD over the weekend. It's the cutest thing to watch Lorelei dance to the music. She's quite the little dancer.

Knitting Update

First, I know I've been really bad about taking/posting pictures. Everyday, I tell myself that I should do a better job of documenting my knitting. Maybe I'll start tomorrow.

Sock from hell update - so I really thought the third time was the charm (and it may still be). I'm still almost down to the heel, but I had a little setback this week. I was trying it on to see how much longer I wanted the leg, when one of my DPNs snapped in half. My lovely expensive Lantern Moon DPNs. Thankfully, I have 5 and I was only using 4 and I was able to save all of my stitches that fell off during the crash. But I've decided that this is a sign that I need to not work on this for a while.

Irish Hiking scarf - still almost finished with the second ball of yarn. I had originally planned on using 4 balls which would make me halfway finished, but Lorelei's Dad wants it a little longer so I think it's going to need 5 balls. And I really plan to post a picture one day soon.

Picovoli - I finally ordered the needles that I need for this last week, so I'm waiting and waiting for them to be delivered. I really want to start this.

New project - I want to work on something new this weekend, so if my needles don't get deleivered I'm going to need something else to start. I've been meaning to start a scarf for Lorelei's teacher (her birthday is in Aug.) so that looks to be at the top of my list. I also bought Stitch 'n Bitch Crochet so I may start trying to learn crochet this weekend. (I will admit that my friend tried to teach me and I was too stupid to figure it out - I hope I can do better with the book.)

Cherry Blossoms

Cherry blossoms are a big deal in our nation's Capitol. In 1912, the mayor of Tokyo gave some cherry trees to DC. These trees only bloom for about a week each year. For that week, thousands of people come to DC to see the trees.

Last year we moved a couple weeks too late to see the cherry blossoms. So this year is my first time experiencing the cherry blossom mania.

On Sunday, we went to the Tidal Basin to see the trees. Of course we had to turn our clocks back so we got there much later than we would have liked. After searching for an hour for parking, we finally joined the throng of people taking pictures of the famous cherry blossoms. There were thousands of people there and everybody was taking pictures every five seconds. Yes, it was very pretty. Yes, I love living near DC. But there were too many people everywhere. OK, maybe I'm a little grouchy.

I will say that Spring in Virginia is very different than Florida. Plants are starting to bloom, there's color everywhere and nobody wants to be inside doing work anymore. It's nice.

Take me out to the ballgame

A baseball timeline:
1996 - I think baseball is a boring sport. I meet Lorelei's Dad who thinks that baseball is the best sport ever.
1997 - The Florida Marlins are in the World Series (and win), so I am forced to watch many hours of boring baseball.
2000 - We move to South Florida - home of the Florida Marlins.
2003 - We go to a couple of baseball games and I find out that my friend is a Mets fan. Early in the season the Marlins and Mets are battling it out for last place in the division and baseball starts to become interesting to me. Then the Malins get good and again go to the World Series (and win).
2004 - I am now a Florida Marlins fan. We went to the opening day game. And then I got pregnant and was too queasy to go to more games. So,I would come home from work everyday for months and watch the games on tv.
2005 - We move to DC. DC has just gotten the Nationals/Expos who are in our division so at least I'll be able to watch the Marlins when they play the Nats. Wrong! So few of the Nationals games were televised last year that I never got to see the Marlins.
2006 - We get MLB extra innings - up to 60 games a week. And Lorelei wore her Malrins jersey yesterday. She was adorable, but wouldn't stand still for a picture. Maybe next time.

So yesterday was Opening Day. I was all excited to see my Marlins play the Astros, since I've paid lots of money to do so. And the cable schedule had the Marlins coverage start at 8 (an hour after the game starts). Ok, so we miss the first hour - no big deal. But then the game before went late, so the Marlins game was half over before I could start watching. Oh well, maybe tonight's coverage will be better.

Shake your booties

I finished these booties (my first pair) a couple of weeks ago and I'm finally posting a picture.
These were gifted to my best friend (and her baby Joshua) while we were on vacation in Florida.

I'm pretty happy with the way these turned out. I need a little more practice picking up stitches, but these were easy to make and only took a couple of hours each. I got the pattern from Simple Knits for Cherished Babies. There are a couple of other things in the book that might be cute for my new nieces/nephews (both of my sisters-in-law are pregnant, but it's too early to tell if there will be boys or girls).

In other knitting news, I'm almost finished with the leg of the sock (again) and this time it fits. I need to figure out the short row heel I want to do but hopefully I'll have a finished sock this week. I'm also still working on the Irish Hiking scarf slowly. I'm getting close to finishing the second ball of yarn, so I should be getting close to the halfway point.