Jessica's Socks and Cookies?

Happy Tuesday!

The girls had today off from school for a teacher inservice and I didn't necessarily want to take them somewhere like Chuck E. Cheese. And I also wanted to get a walk in, but how to do that with the girls? Hmmmm. First, we three took Buster for a walk around the neighborhood, that way the girls felt like they walked with me. Then I asked them if they would like to go to the "big park" and play while I walked on the path around the lake? They were ALL for that! Yay! So, we rode our bikes over there and I walked around the lake about 5 times and got about a mile or so logged in on my pedometer. I think it was somewhere around 6600 steps. It was a beautiful morning and there were several other walkers out as well. I didn't want to leave the girls alone too much, so I would go check on them after every lap. It worked out really well. Then we rode our bikes home. I think it maybe a little less than a mile to the park from our house. So even though I didn't get my full walk in, I sure feel good about what I did get done.

I finished Jessica's socks last night! Yay! I'll show those in a minute, but Amy's been asking me for the past few days if we could make cookies. Today seemed a perfect day to do that. We followed a recipe out of a crafts book I got Amy years ago. She pores over that thing and oftentimes wants to do an activity from it. Anyway, the recipe called for castor sugar. HUH? What the heck is THAT? A quick check on Google informed me it's a superfine sugar that dissolves almost instantly. Since we were low on sugar anyway and planning a quick trip to Walmart to get that and a couple of movies the girls wanted to buy with their own money, I figured I'd see if they carried it. Nope. But a website said you could grind regular sugar in the blender or food processor and use it for castor sugar. Okay fine. Did that.

Had to take a couple of pictures to commemorate our cookie making.

They loved wearing the aprons that Auntie Kelly got for them one Christmas. Jessica's lips are blue because she had a Blue Coconut slushie from Sonic. (I didn't buy it, one of the gals there likes the girls so much, she oftentimes gives them one, isn't that nice?)

So we got the dough mixed and then it was time to roll it out for cutting out cookie shapes. Um, what a pain in the patootie it was. We followed the recipe exactly, but I couldn't believe how sticky the dough was. We floured and rolled and cut and when I tried to lift the dough onto the cookie sheet, it would break or get misshapen. I tell you, for a so called simple kids' activity, it sure wasn't easy! LOL The girls were great sports about it and still had fun, so I call it a success even if the cookie shapes were a little funny.

And now for Jessica's socks. She was so excited to see them finished when she got up this morning, she immediately pulled them on (and I heaved an inner sigh of relief that they actually fit)! I'm also relieved to report that the laddering problem I had with my socks doesn't seem to have been repeated with this pair. Yay. I have an idea as to why...but first, take a looksee...

I can't remember if I told you about my trying another new to me technique for knitting socks. For my pair, I used two circular needles, following a book I borrowed from the library. I found a book at Joann's that shows how to do the two socks at the same time, but with ONE long circular needle! This really appealed to me because I was having trouble finding the sizes I needed (unless I ordered them online) and following this technique, I'd only have to buy one needle as opposed to two for the sizes I didn't already have. Does that make sense? Anyway...I think this technique really helped me get a better handle on pulling the yarn tightly when I needed to, and it didn't seem to pull as much when one of the socks was resting while I worked on the other.

Now I'm starting a pair for Amy, but I'm going to venture out a bit to use a pattern that has more texture than just the knit stitch I used on Jessica's. Oh I know, I'm probably setting myself up for having to make that same pair for Jessica, but I'm getting a tad bored of just doing the knit stitch, I'd like a little variety to keep it interesting.

That's it from me today. Thanks so much for stopping by. I sure hope your Tuesday has been terrific!