hats and more hats

Better than "things that make me crabby", hey? HA! My sister has commented several times lately that I seem crabby, but I am not. I just am in pain! It pry does give me low tolerance however. :) My sinus infection is on the fifty seventh week, I finished the antibiotics and will hit the doc again this week. Plus my life is pretty much pain. Sometimes I want to blog about that but figure you all will be too bored...

So hats it is!

I am currently knitting the most complicated thing I have ever knitted. I can't even watch tv! ( I will post pics of it when I am done.) So when I want to watch a show, I do an easy hat instead.

This hat is for my Goddaughter Tess. It should match her new winter coat. These suckers are so stretchy, I swear they fit a 3 year old to an adult! I expect her to wear it well into her 90s. :)
I asked her and her sister if they wanted plain top, pompom top, or funky top. She picked funky, so I did four i-cords.
Here is her sister Lia's hat.

She picked pompom, and asked if I could add bells. Now, why didn't I ever think of that? I love bells!!
This is just like Senja's hat but made larger for Moo. She hasn't seen it yet...

This was an attempt at a child's hat that came out adult size. It also has a tendency to curl at the forehead, which really irritates me. No home for it yet.

Hope you are having a great weekend, and no R2D2 flu!

Anne

more hats

I am on my billionth sinus infection. Luckily, the antibiotic I am on has been spotted featured in lawyer commercials- it causes tendon tears! Yee Haw!

Here is the last apple hat in progress- yeah, he thought it was way funny to wear it while it was still on the needles. And to run fast away so the yarn pulled out behind him!

This is one of the green apple hats.

This hat was a bit more complicated. I did it in one year size, and it is... about too small on the 4 month old. I have to adjust it much bigger to fit a nine-ish girl next.

I didn't take a pic of Hail's horse before she opened her gifts....

Have a great week,

Anne

catching up

is hard to do. Or is that making up?

I could list the excuses for why I haven't posted, but why should I bore you?

The first item I just made today. I am sure it is some form of copywrite violation and I will be sued, expecially since with my vast readership there is sure to be an employee of the company reading this. :)
My nephew wants to be an UPS man for halloween. I managed to buy him a hat off of ebay, but could not find any patches. (Heard that they don't pass them around any more cuz of security concerns.) Thus I had to make one. Here is my version-
I printed off a picture of one, traced it onto buckrum, then embroidered it with yarn. I had probs with the yarn, so I just filled the brown in with marker. (think I may have messed up the brush end of it, sigh.)

Now some older stuff. This pair of socks I made for my Goddaughter Tessa. I may have posted the first pair earlier, the lace stretched out too much and ended up fitting Hailey... this pair was more restrained. Julie asked me for some convertable mittens. You can fold the top back and hook it to the button and have free fingers. The pattern had an open thumb also, but I thought that was unrealistic for Minnesota.
Close up of the cool buttons I bought.
This is Senj's second pair of knee-high socks. I thought the first didn't fit right, so I adjusted the pattern. These go up higher, luckily, since she grows a foot a month.
I started an apple hat obsession when I made this one for Senj. It is a ONE year old size, and way too short for her. I think if I make it with about an inch and a half of ribbing, it will fit better. The next will be a green apple tho. When Julie saw it, she loved it, so I made one for Ethie (he wanted to be an apple for Halloween!) and a green apple for Greggie. Will post pics when I see them next.
Close up of the stem and leaves.
Jodi asked for a bathroom sign-out book for her classroom. I did one on my Bind-It-all, and thought it came out pretty cool. Also had a picture of an outhouse (J's request) and I put a toilet on one side too.

That should catch me up.

Have a great weekend!

Love you,

Anne

funky socks

I finished this pair of socks for my brother, finally. He has been asking for a while, but there were a few people ahead of him, and I did have that dalliance with crochet... :)

Most of the socks I make are with Knit Picks Essential Sock Yarn. This is because it is nice quality and pretty much the cheapest sock yarn I have found that is washable. Usually the Multis knit up in splotches, like on Elise's socks shown in my January 11th post.

click here to see socks

However, the pair I am working on for Olli are quite... different. He picked the yarn, a varied blue with a bit of purple.

When I started knitting, 64 stitches on size 2 needles, it made a really cool vertical stripe pattern instead of the splotches. I really like it, there is a wide purple stripe and a wide light blue stripe, separated by dark blue. I was a bit nervous cuz it came out much more PURPLE than I expected from the ball, but I planned to put the purple stripe in the back. I didn't. Just wasn't thinking, lol.
I still think they are pretty cool.

Here is a picture of the light stripe. (The purple came out too dark to see well- the problems of sun allergies- low lighting!)
This is the finished sock. The funky stripes started again after I got to the straight part of the foot, which was fairly short.

One more picture.

When I started the second sock, I was surprised it did not stripe quite the same. The stripes are a bit more diagonal. Strange, hey? It is from another ball of yarn tho... the first took 23 grams, and I didn't want to run out. I will use the leftover small skeins for baby socks.

Should be fun to see how they turn out. I am about 25 rows in on the cuff.

Tomorrow I start hand therapy, so I should be able to crochet soon!

Almost forgot- here are Senja's knee highs. I think the next pair will be a bit taller. The feet fit a bit strange, but she is only three months old and her feet are pretty chubby. :)

Have a great week,
Anne

book of the month

Hey Everyone,

I have been pretty sick for the last week, so I haven't been online as much. I do have a really cool project to post as soon as I give it to the person I made if for tho! :)

Book of the Month:

Autism's False Prophets-
Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and The Search For a Cure
by Paul A Offit, M.D.

I got this book after watching a show on autism on tv. It is really interesting- it tells how the media and random people who happen to have a dog in the fight can turn the opinions of the majority of Americans.
If I asked you if there had been found a cause for autism, would you say mercury? Or vaccinations?
Both are WRONG. So far all they know is that it is genetic and starts fairly early in the pregnancy. Mercury and vaccinations have NO effect on autism rates. Yep, people have sued and gotten big money claiming it, but it has been proven not true. Many times over. Does the public ever hear about those studies? Nope, we get Jenny McCarthy and RFK junior writing books and articles where the most basic statistics are false inflaming us into skipping vaccinations, leading to preventable deaths. Sigh.
And poor (not monetarily necessarily!) parents spending thousands on wacky "treatments" that can end up killing the child.

This book is very interesting, thought provoking and sticks to SCIENCE.

Have a great weekend,
Anne

Reiki

So my last post and discussion with Julie got me thinking about Reiki. I still can't say I have healed anyone really, but it does have some interesting uses.

I especially seem connected to distance Reiki. I have used it to tell when my sister and sister-in-laws were in labor, and when they finished, for the last many babies. (Just a side note- labor must HURT- cuz it kills my hands to check the field of someone in labor!)

I have used it very successfully to relieve babies' gas pains.

I can help people with pain, tho not really fix the problem.

I have had some good results figuring out where the problem is when Gregory has been hospitalized. A few months ago, Julie asked me to work on him when he was on his way in and I texted her that there was a spot on the left side of his stomach that just sucked the energy. She called me and told me that was where he pointed when she asked him where it hurt. Then when he was going in on Friday, I was working on him and told her that it was his chest- it had never felt that way before, but the rest of his field was strong. (His field is usually really strong- strange for a chronically ill person, huh?) Turns out he had beginning Pneumonia!

I also have had a very scary experience. I was working on a friend and her lower pelvic region was like a black hole. It wouldn't really seem to take energy, it just was the worst thing I had felt. Trying to be diplomatic, I told her it was a weak area. She then told me she was just barely pregnant. I told her that the baby must need a lot of energy to start growing, but I knew something bad was happening. A few weeks later, she miscarried. Scary.

Reiki also seems good for calming. My sister calls me when her baby is unhappy and she can't figure out why, I can soothe the babe with Reiki. (Pry is gas!)

One other thing I find interesting. When they taught me both Reiki and Healing Touch, they said that when doing distance work, you must always first ask the person if you may. Mostly I do people I know, so I don't bother. Once tho, a friend asked me to work on a relative that I didn't really know. I did my routine and started working. At first I could feel the field perfectly, then it was like a huge door slamming down on me and pushing me away. After that I could not feel a thing. I asked my friend, and she admitted that the person would hate anyone trying to do energy work! No means no! :)

Anyway, I am sure I could come up with many examples like these. I didn't want anyone to think just because of my last post that I am not going to do energy work anymore. :)

Have a great week,
Anne

book of the month

This month my book pick is Trick or Treatment by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst.

Basically this book looks at all the alternative treatments and the studies that have been done, then tells you whether it actually is worthwhile. (In a word, NO.)

The main discussions are of Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Chiropractic, and Herbal Medicine. I will give you short highlights of each.

Acupuncture: I have done it, seen no difference, and the practitioner finally told me not to come back because he couldn't help me. The book says the studies show no affect except the placebo effect. Basically, sticking the needles randomly has the same effect as doing it the "right" way.

Homeopathy: The products are so diluted that you may as well put one drop of your medicine in Lake Superior, then drink one drop out of the lake. Basically, there is NONE of the original ingredient in the finished solution. There can be a small placebo effect if you believe in it, but no lasting treatment.

Chiropractic: May be helpful if you have low back problems, but takes longer and is more expensive than traditional treatments, and is much more dangerous. If they touch your neck, you can die. If the chiro is a "straight" they have delusional beliefs and ideas that are very dangerous. They cannot help ear infection, asthma, bedwetting, learning disorders, and other problems like these. Do not take x-rays. They are unnecessary and expose you to radiation.

Herbal Medicine: Untested and dangerous. Many drugs come from plants, etc, but they are tested and you know the side effects. St. John's Wort is good for minor depression, but has interactions with other meds you may be on, and you should be aware of the side effects. They are often contaminated or adulterated.

The book also has a few pages on most other alternative treatments. Most are not proven by studies.

Note: you may have heard of the heart study that "proved" prayer worked. It was deeply flawed and many following studies disproved the theory.

To quote Hippocrates, the father of medicine:

There are, in fact, two things, science and opinion:
the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Have a good week,
Anne