Cuteness abounds

There are few things more peaceful than a child sleeping. We had our eight year old nephew over for the weekend, and on Sunday morning we were both up early and he was still dead asleep. It was a beautiful moment, him upstairs sleeping, my husband relaxing on the couch with a fresh cup of coffee and the Sunday papers. It added an extra layer of peace.

Another beautiful moment, althought not as quiet, was when I took our two year old niece outside the restaurant after dinner to burn off some steam. We ran. First we circled the giant column just outside the restaurant. Around and around and around and around, her little hand clutching mine and her tiny feet pattering fast. Then she wanted to take off down the sidewalk in front of some neighboring stores and didn't want to hold my hand any more. Insisting on anything to a two year old is a good way to lead to a tantrum, so I let her run free, running by her side, anxiously poised to react to any early signs of an eminent tumble. She did fine. It's funny, as adults we run with purpose, on a treadmill or along a particular route. Kids just run willy nilly, back and forth, wherever they feel like.

I love two year olds. They are starting to be independent and their personalities are becoming evident, yet they're not quite "of the world" and all of its practicalities and conventions. Emotions are right there on the surface - a tiny thing can bring about ecstatic joy and giggles (hiding your head under your sweater) or tragic tears and wails of doom (touching one of her animal toys at the wrong moment). Life is lived fully, drama by drama, emotion by emotion.

--- I met Kymm at The Point Knitting Cafe for lunch and yarn browsing. I wish I had a place like this near my home or office - I would hang out there all the time. The quiche I had (thanks Kymm!) was excellent and, having not knit for over a year, Kymm bought needles and yarn and cast on right there! Now if I can only get her podcasting again... I will definitely go back. They seemed to have a wider range of different kinds of yarn than Purl, but not the immense range of colors, so Purl is still, for me, the ultimate drool center of the knitting universe (at least out of the three stores I've been to so far!) But you can't really hang out at Purl. I resisted buying any yarn and they didn't have the needles I wanted, so we stopped by Purl too and I got 40" Addis in size 5 for Molly's cardigan, speaking of which...

I finished the bulk of the body last week, but slipped the stitches onto yarn as I didn't have the 5s to do the garter edge. That's a good trick for freeing up needles from works in progress.

I knit the first sleeve over the weekend (immediately putting into practice what I just learned about SSK and K2TOG with a little help from here). The photos were taken this morning just before I switched to the 5s for the garter edge.

Lastly, a couple of links. This yarn looks gorgeous but what is more intriguing is the rave review of it...

The Entrelac Socks from the latest Interweave Knits also look intriguing, but I'm not sure what shoes I would wear them with. And am I too old?

Also, I may have been living under a rock because I didn't know you could search blogs only eg at http://blogsearch.google.com or http://www.technorati.com or I’m sure many other places. Very handy, especially for things like searching for blog entries about particular knitting patterns! I added the technorati widget to the sidebar so you can, amongst other things, search this blog.

That’s about it for now.