First up, the major project, the Russian Prime.
It is going smoothly enough now that I've figured out that 'in pattern' bit. I've got about three inches of sleeve, maybe four. If I were to knuckle down and get serious, I could finish it in four or five days. Well, with another day for finishing like sewing down the damned hem and binding off all the ribbing. (I do a sewn bind-off and skip it when I'm on fire to keep knitting... like, uh, always.)
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On the horizon is the Second Sock, from Sock Roulette.
It's lovely, and I really want the pair. Preferably by the end of April, when I want to do the photo montage of all the pairs of socks knit up with the Sock Roulette swap (you guys hearing that?) Ideally I'd like to finish the Russian Prime and then knit the Second Sock, but if I hit mid-April and the Russian Prime isn't done, screw it, I'm on to the Second Sock.
There were questions about the pattern. It is "Spring Forward", from Knitty.
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The Setesdal pullovers are on tap next, after that. I'm doing the incidental, planning stuff now, like knitting some gauge swatches and doing some charts, mostly as breaks when I'm tired of actually knitting. It's getting there, just slowly.
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Next project, the spinning.
I'm really happy with the first 180 yards, which I washed up today.
Now that it's washed, I'm sure it's thin enough for socks, and will probably wind up knitting it up as a sort of break, while working on the Setesdal pullovers that are looming on the horizon.
For now, the spinning is the project that really appeals to me. I'm not sure why, except that I usually find spinning very calming and soothing, and right now everyone is driving me stark, raving mad. Well. Maybe that's a good reason, after all. (I just called my child "baby" and she said "That's GOOBER, you poo head." Time to spin some more singles.)
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And that brings me neatly to my OTHER project.
Lately, getting her to nap has been like climbing Everest. You can do it, but damnation is it a huge amount of effort. I managed it today (hence the photo), but I won't say about tomorrow. You just never know. (I wouldn't push the nap so hard, but she turns into the kid from hell without one.)
Although she did discover the great joy of zoning out to a lava lite today.
Maybe we'll try THAT for nap time tomorrow. Can't hurt, and nothing else has worked.
14 comments:
I guess there is a reason why they look so darn cute sometimes. It's so you don't choke them to death other times.
Pam
Neither of mine were still napping at 3. Vaughan figured out by then that if he didn't nap, he got me all to myself while the baby napped. And Nicholas gave up his nap at around 14-15 months. Oh yes he did. Makes you feel a little dizzy I bet, doesn't it? It was taking me sooooo long to get him to nap, and then I realized that when he did nap, say for a couple of hours, he wouldn't fall asleep at night until, oh, four hours later than usual, and so the net sleep time was actually less when he napped. The flip side was, he was ready for bed at 6 pm. It was a bit of an adjustment--earlier dinner and so on--but it worked for him and thus for me.
Good luck. Nap transitions are always tricky and very much not fun.
As I remember both of my kids stopped napping before their 3rd birthdays (much to my dismay). Made for some really ugly dinners for a while.
You are making a lot of progress on your projects and I love the new yarn you are spinning. Usually not an orange person but its just so darn cheery :-)
That orange sock wool is just delicious, will be interesting to see how it knits up. And I love the lava lamp picture! It reminds me that we don't turn ours on neraly enough.
Mine napped until he started full day school , and still naps in the summer sometimes. And he goes to bed at nine. He used to go earlier but he finally got used to staying up a little later. The flip side is he gets up between 5 and 6 every morning. Always have and we've never succeeded in making him get up later evenif we put him to bed late for weeks at a time. He would just fall asleep. Oh well it's not hard to get ready for school in the morning, at least.
Being childless, I have nothing to offer for your napping predicament.
But I love that your feet are imprinted on your spinning wheel's pedals. :D
Oh gods... we're at that stage. No nap, it's someone else's kid. With a nap? That kid's up forEVER! I love the sock yarn... sometimes there's something about a bright orange that just does it for me!
Good luck with the naps. We gave up when Kathryn was about 18 months. She has a "quiet time" now, where she looks at books and lies down, but doesn't actually sleep.
The sock yarn looks fantastic, and I'm not surprised spinning is keeping you sane.
Each of my two kids handled naps differently. My older one, the wild girl, had to be coaxed/forced into them. My mother-in-law asked, "Won't she just go to sleep on the floor when she's tired?" and I gawked at her. Couldn't imagine such a thing. My son was easier; he DID drop off wherever he was, easy-peasy. Spooky.
Both stopped napping somewhere around the age of 3; I'm watching my granddaughter #1 with interest, as she's at that age now. Sometimes she'll nap...I have to watch her carefully, to catch her at the magic moment when her little eyelids droop. If I miss it, no nap. Her mom was like that. Good luck. I suspect WE need those naps more than they do; I know I did!
I have to say that my kids LOVED to nap . . . but only at home. In fact, the summer before kindergarten, my DH's job (he is a school teacher and had this wonderful privilege) was to wean the kids off of naps.
With the now 15 year old, his theory was just cold turkey it. Lasted about two days when he decided that cold turkey was not a great idea!
I do know that one of the things with one of them (I think the now 22 year old) was that we would set a timer and she had to be in bed and quiet until the timer went off. She ALWAYS fell asleep . . . and did I go in and wake her up . . . not a chance.
I so loved their nap times . . . and I liked them better after naps.
They're always better when they're well rested (like most of us - we grown-ups just have to tough it out when we're overtired. The kids can act the way we feel!).
I don't remember when my son stopped napping, but I do remember making him lie down quietly with a book or listening to some quiet music for a while even if he swore he wasn't going to sleep. Sometimes he slept, sometimes not. But he's always been really good about going to sleep at night so I can't complain too much. And when he doesn't get a good night's sleep, I make sure to shoot his teacher an e-mail warning, so they know to expect cranky behavior. Lack of sleep hits him really hard!
You always spin such beautiful even yarn! I'm jealous! No matter how I try, mine is always uneven! (Not so much that I won't work with it, of course!) I just say "It's handspun. It's SUPPOSED to look like that!"
Good luck with your ambitious knitting schedule! Didn't you say that you wanted to finish the Setesdal sweaters before the summer?
I had one child who fought sleep every chance she got. Now as a young adult, she sleeps whenever she can. Probably making up for all those missed naps. If only children knew that someday they're going to want to nap and not be able to....they probably wouldn't care.
I think you'll like the Second Sock. Spring Forward is a ridiculously easy pattern, simple enough to partially zone out while knitting it but not so simple that it's really boring.
My daughter will be three in June and we thought she'd given up naps a few months ago. Now, she will just drop off on the couch about half the time. It's kind of like Russian Roulette, though: sometimes she needs the nap and is better for having had one, and sometimes she doesn't really need it and ends up going to bed late and waking really early that night.
And sometimes, when she had a nap she didn't actually need, she wakes up at 3 AM and the only thing that will make her amenable to going back to bed is an hour and a half of SpongeBob.
One of the reasons I love Ravelry is that so often, a pattern that I said, "Meh" to in one yarn is a "WOW!" in another. Knitty's Spring Forward doesn't grab me. Yours does. (Yours is lavender, huh.)
I've got a kid who has pretty much always resisted sleep. Once when he was about 4 months old he kept himself awake for some crazy amount of time, 5 or 6 hours. Eventually they get old enough to safely self-entertain, thank goodness.
Our lava lamp is green.:D
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