Busy Bee

We visited a beautiful park this weekend in a part of San Diego not necessarily known for it's natural beauty. This was one of the sculptures that really stood out to me.

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that
will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely
healing in the repeated refrains of nature -
the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter"

- Rachel Carson

And here's a busy little bee taking advantage of the sunshine in between all of the rain we've had.

I've been busy as well. I finished Sivan's sweater and finally got outside in between rain drops to take a picture.

The sweater fits her well. I was worried that she might be too big for the 6-12 month size, but she still has some growing room. Just enough to get us to Spring I suspect.

I Should Be Knitting

The original intention of this blog was to post info about my knitting life, but since I haven't been getting any knitting done thanks to my recent Ravelry invitation (woohoo!) and all of my fiddling around with Flickr & making mosaics, this is what you get instead!

The girls & I had a nice morning at the park. Such a beautiful sky after all the rain we got this week. OK..here's a knitting tidbit. My youngest is wearing a back zip hoodie that my grandmother made long before she was born. My grandmother was a speedy knitter & I have memories of her needles clicking away while she was watching TV, not even looking at her hands. My other grandmother was also a great knitter & used to make sweaters at home for a company who sold them for much more than they paid her to make them. My mother is also a knitter who taught me to knit about 5 years ago. Here's the question: Is there such thing as a knitting gene?

Wednesday at the Garden

Wednesdays are our day to go to the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas. It's a beautiful place to walk around with the girls and Wednesdays are especially fun because it is craft day in the Children's Garden.

I'm not making much progress on the legwarmers. Sleep has taken priority & I managed to get a 1 1/2 hour nap in today with the girls. I woke up feeling quite refreshed with a couple of new ideas for new projects as well!

Stash Consumption

The gift was a big success at the shower on Saturday. Woohoo! I had to tell her that I knit it myself because everyone thought it was store bought. Not a knitter in the house...so interesting that with about 30 people there, no one was a current knitter. Anyways, I'm excited that she liked it. So on to the next project(s):
This is on the way to become leg warmers for my 2 year old for her ballet class. I'm winging the pattern, but it is very basic with a simple k2p2 rib at each end & St st in the middle. To make it even easier I'm doing it in the round so I don't have to purl or sew a seam. The goal is to finish them by Thursday so the St st should go quickly.

I have a habit of picking up single balls of yarn at every yarn store I go into. Usually just 1 ball, which is never enough to really work with. These 2 came from a yarn shop wayyyyy up north in New Hampshire that I visited with my mom 2 years ago. They were in the sale bin so who knows how long they were sitting way up there, but they were calling out to me so here they are. The pink is a hand dyed 100% alpaca called Atacama from Chile and the white is a mix of acrylic & wool from Phildar in France. Hopefully they will have a nice life as my daughter's legwarmers!

I'm REALLY trying to use up my stash before I buy more yarn. From what I hear, this is a common dilema, but I definitely want to make some progress before my Ravelry invite comes (2,570 people still ahead of me). I just know that I will be compelled to log every single bit of yarn in my stash. Argggggg...compulsive organizer freak that I am.

I have 2 more WIP as well, but no photos yet. You'll just have to wait & see!

I Knew This Would Come in Handy Someday

This is a simple design logo that I made for a graphic design class 2 years ago. At the time I wanted to make something clean and simple that would be easy to recreate as a stamp, embossing, etc. It was meant to be a symbol of balance for me. I was not even thinking about knitting. Well, today as I am rushing to put the baby shower gift together, I decided to add a label for washing instructions and came across the old logo. Now I see it as a ball of yarn! How interesting.... I will refine it when I have more time & add name, email, etc., but for now I am just trying to get out the door and not be late. Funny how I can make time to do this post, though!

Finished Kai!

Here's the finished baby sweater for Merav's baby shower. I was going to model it on Sivan, but I knit this one for size 0-6 months and little Sivi is a chunka munka! The pattern is the Kai sweater in Natural Knits for Babies & Moms. The Yarn is Suss cotton in "Stone" from my local yarn shop. It's a beautiful sage color which looks kind of gray in this picture, but a great gender neutral color. I'm skipping the booties as I am running out of time & still need to find packaging and wrap this up for Saturday morning.


Now it's time to move on to the next project. More on that to come soon after I get some sleep...

Happy New Year 2008

OK, so it's a little late, but still January so I think I'm off to a great start trying to stick to a New Year's resolution of getting more involved in a knitting community. I've been following Knitty for months now and have really been inspired by the designers and caught up in their blogs. Since we moved to San Diego in May I have been searching for a knitting group to replace my weekly "new moms" group back in NH. It's not easy finding knitters in San Diego! Hmmm...I wonder if the fact that I've been walking around in flip flops in January has something to do with it. In NH it's easy to stay cuddled up knitting all winter. So here I am trying to get this blog up and running to motivate me to finish & show off my projects. Oh, and since this is my first post, I should explain that the name, Uma Joy, comes from my 2 daughters middle names. They are 4 months & 2.5 years old and my inspiration! And here they are with my husband, Yaniv:


On to knitting....my current project is a sweater for a baby shower this Saturday (photos coming soon). I just have to finish the seaming and then it's done. I knit a matching hat already, pattern courtesy of The Shetland Trader (thank you, Gudrun!). I'm planning on whipping up some booties as well for a nice matching set. I think it is always a gamble knitting a present for someone. I'm never sure if they really will like it or not. I am hopeful for this gift though!