STEPS!!!

So!  Something has been happening over the last few weeks.... the little guy has been taking some steps!

This is not of him taking steps but it's one of my fav. pictures of him lately so... yeah.  WATERMELON.

It's happened SO gradually.  There was no big These Are His First Steps moment.

His first "I can climb in a box!" moment.

With my daughter it was a clear line.  She decided to do it and went from this to running in two weeks.  Which exactly how she's done everything.  Reading?  One day she couldn't do it and the next day she could.  Because she decided to.  Matt got home from work that day and she literally told him "By the way I can read now."

With my middle child - the Dude - there was a "first steps" moment where he commanded the attention of a crowd.  Actually, just about everything the Dude does he does to command attention:

Guess which one is an extrovert?

But my Tiny*?  He's an overthinker.  He works it out.

So it's been incredibly gradual.  First a long reach.  Then a step between things.  Then two.  Then three.  He clearly makes a conscientious decision about if he's going to walk or crawl.  You can almost see him do the math on the situation.

"If the distance to the couch from this chair is X than the number of steps I need to take is Y. If Y exceeds 3 than crawl.  Except if the number of toys carrying exceeds 2 or if Mommy is there to catch me."

In the last couple of days his equation seems to have flipped.  Walking is preferable to crawling.  At least for short distances.  Matt was able to capture a couple of videos while I was at the park the other night with the big kids (meeting a new kindergarten classmate!  Yay!):


Yay walking!!!!

*Tiny is his newish nickname.  It has really stuck.  We all call him it.  It's funny because the opposite is true - he's our biggest kid.  He is literally only 6 pounds lighter than his brother and is kindof a bruiser.

Wildwater Kingdom.

So!  This weekend we took the kids to Wildwater Kingdom in Aurora, Ohio for their very first trip to a water park!

It was super funtimes.  I was a little nervous about taking little kids to something like this - would there be enough for them to do?  What about the logistics of base needs?  But it all worked out great!

We left the littlest one with my parents for the afternoon. There would have been plenty for him to do and enjoy but one kid to one parent seemed like a better ratio for our first go at this:

I have no problem with getting all of the grandparent attention ALL TO MYSELF FOR ONCE.

Plus it worked out really well to have one parent on top of the slides and the other catching at the bottom:

It's about a 45 min drive to Wildwater Kingdom from my house on the west side of Cleveland.  We decided to go for the afternoon to be there in the heat of the day.  This crazy cold summer is really messing up my pool related plans!  But it worked out b/c the kids napped in the car on the way there and were good to go for the rest of the afternoon/evening:

We started out in the Splash Landing area - which, PIRATE SHIP!

The kids were a little nervous about the bigger slides on the ship (first time at a waterpark after all.  Although they did try out some of them later in the day) but LOVED the smaller ones by the kiddie pool area.  I think they went down the blue slide about 50 times:

Then we headed over to the Riptide Run area for a little lazy river action. The Dude freaked out a bit because he thought we were going to take him on this:

Liquid Lightning - aka NOT a kiddie ride.

But then we explained that we were just walking past and that we could watch.  After a few min of watching other people go down it he wanted to go himself!  Sorry, buddy.  Maybe in a couple of years.

After the lazy river we walked over to Tidal Wave Bay where the girl and I took a little poolside break:

While the Dude did this:

 We stayed through one set of waves (so. much. fun.) and then made the kids get out b/c they were pretty toasty:

DONEZO.

So we headed over to the Happy Harbor Cafe for some dinner:

While we were finishing up eating Matt snuck in a couple of runs on the body slides in Thunder Falls:

Then we headed back to Splash Landing for more, and more, and more, and more slides:

At that point I texted my mom that we were going to be a bit later picking up the little guy than I though b/c "They'd be happy if I told them that we just live here now."

SERIOUSLY.

We ended the day with another trip through Riptide Run and some play on the animals in the Coral Cove (it was closed earlier in the day).  Oh and they watched me take a trip down one of the tube slides b/c I couldn't leave without doing at least one!

I'm somewhere up there.

All in all it was a great day.  All of us had a ball.  Totally worth it even with kids that are too small for some of the attractions. The best part?  The looks on their faces:

Yay waterpark!

Disclosure:  I am a Cedar Point Blogger.  I was provided with tickets to Wildwater Kingdom as well as meals and parking.  As always all opinions and photographs are my own.  

Subtle Ombré Yarn.

So!  When getting back into this yarnie game I spent some time poking around Ravelry getting ideas and inspiration.  And one trend - that I've seen many times outside the world of knitting - really stuck out for me.  Ombré:

Left:  Ombre Cowl by Purl Soho, image by Purl Soho.  Right: Ombré by Tanis Lavallee, image by tanisfiberarts 

So pretty!  So trendy!  So much fun to knit!  Usually this effect is achieved through mixing different colors of yarn by holding two or more yarns together.  Several yarnies even offer kits of mini-skeins for this purpose.  Very cool.  And something I might consider doing in the future.  I also found yarn that was dyed to be self-striping with the stripes changing color along the skein.  But I wondered:

Could I dye a skein of yarn that transitioned colors from one end to the other in a more subtle way?

Self-striping yarn is great but that's not what look I wanted.  I wanted to basically recreate the subtle gradient created with several yarns held together.... only with one skein.  No ends to weave in.  Easy.

So I took to the dye pots and did some experimenting:

And some more experimenting:

The result was this:

Once I was pretty sure I had an actual Ombre happening I test knit a bit of a shawl starting at one end of the skein and then the other to see if there was any difference:

 Did it work?

YAY!  Those samples are knit from the same skein of yarn.  The only difference is that for the orange I started at one end and for the purple I started at the other.  It absolutely worked.  SO MUCH YES!

As of now I have only produced repeatable results on Souvenir - my DK weight, 100% superwash merino yarn.  Which lends itself perfectly to the one-skein projects that showcase this unique yarn perfectly.  Ombré  Hats!  Scarves!  Cowls!  Shawls!  Ombré All the Things!

I LOVE the way the transition turned out:

And watching the colors change was so interesting that I designed and knit this shawl in less than a week.  That's crazy for me.

Selfie in the driveway crazy.

I'll have more information on the pattern soon - here's the Ravelry link.

The Subtle Ombre yarn will be available - in several colorways - at the Destination Yarn Trunk Show at River Colors in Lakewood TOMORROW.  After that I will list some of it on my etsy site (if any of it is left that is!).

Yay Ombre!

Happy Birthday Cleveland!

So!  You guys!  Cleveland is REALLY having  moment right now.  The RNC is coming!  LeBron is back (and even vaguely apologized for debacle that was "The Decision") It's almost like the rest of the world is finally catching a clue as to how great it is here!

Like us Clevelanders have been saying for years.  SIGH.

Anyways! In the spirit of all the Yay Cleveland that's going around right now - and because it's my city's birthday today - I thought I should post about all the fun we've been having here this summer.  In handy listicle form.  So here we go!

Top 10 Things That Have Been Awesome In Cleveland This Summer

(I had to narrow it down quite a bit)
((the list is in no particular order))

1.)  The Westpark Independence Day Parade:

We were very festive.  ROCK FLAG AND EAGLE.

 Um... I'm not sure how we've never been to this before.  It travels literally right around the corner from us and is one of the largest Independence Day Parades in the area.

We will most definitely be making this one a tradition!

2.)  Wade Oval Wed.

Band!  Outside!  Gyros and Lemonade!  What's not to love?  We missed last week but hope to go again this week.... although I have been wanting to check out Edgewater Live and keeping the kids up at a festival two nights in a row might be rough... SUMMER!

3.)  Edgewater Yacht Club:

A friend of mine has a membership there and invites us to go swimming sometimes.  Pool, view of the city, and a playground attached?  YES.

4.)  Mitchell's Ice Cream:
I don't have a picture of us actually eating it so how about one of the happy post-ice cream baby?

Yeah I'm not sure how it took us so long to discover this one but in the last few weeks I've been to all of their west side locations.  Avon with my knitting group, Rocky River with my family, and the new Ohio City flagship store with some out of town friends.  Their Salted Caramel is DELICIOUS.  I might have a problem.

No picture of the flagship store but here's the kids frolicking around Ohio City.

5.)  Taste of Tremont:

The Dude's reaction to the Lolita Mac'n Cheese.

It was super blowed up this year but still one of our favorites.  Next year we'll try to go earlier in the day and beat the crowd.

6.)  Edgewater for Fireworks:

So I've never done this before.  Or at least not in recent memory.  It was AWESOME.  We sat on the burm right out side of the park.  First of all while waiting for the fireworks you get a sunset over the water view.  Then we watched Lakewood which seemed to be rightnexttous.  Then we watched Brahtenal and Euclid and who knows how many other communities over the lake.  We were literally surrounded by fireworks.  You could see them being shot off all along the shore.  Very, very cool.  Finally we had a stunning view for Cleveland's show - Water, Fireworks, City Skyline.  YES.

7.)  The Transient Marina:

Have you guys seen this?  It's a marina for transient boaters that just opened up on the North Coast Harbor.  It finally opened this summer and it's an amazing amenity for Cleveland to have downtown.

8.)  The Cleveland Flea:

We finally went for the first time and it was super fun.  Although we'd plan a little better next time with food trucks / kid's hunger levels.  I always forget that food truck food takes a bit to prepare...

9.)  Fresh Fork!

We are very much enjoying our CSA.  I know it's been rough for the farmers what with the cool, wet, basically crazy summer we've had.  And the peach destroying awful that was the Polar Vortex.  And yet our bag is full of awesome week after week. Trevor and his crew have really hit it out of the park this year!

10.)  The Circle of Life Carousel at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo:

We finally went a few weeks ago after much anticipation.  It lived up to it's reputation.  Possibly one of the coolest things in our city.  Every "horse" is a different animal.  Each is neater than the next.  The Girl rode on an iceburg with penguins (like Elsa).  The Dude rode on a Shark (because of course he did).  They both have big plans for the next time we go.

So yeah.  Yay Cleveland Summer!!!

PS - I hope to see everyone at the Destination Yarn Trunk Show at River Colors this Saturday!!!

Summer of Socks!

So!  We're going to ignore my hiatus there.  It happens.  I have 3 kids and it's summer.  Anyways!  I have been loosely participating in the fun that is Summer of Socks.  Which basically means I"m knitting a lot of socks and I'm dying a lot of sock yarn (wait... what?):

Plain sock knit out of Destination Yarn in the colorway The Road Ahead.

Groovy Sock knit out of Knit Picks Felici.

And even finishing some:

I actually finished those up for Father's Day for Matt.  Because nothing says I love and appreciate you more than guy socks knit on size 1 needles.  SERIOUSLY.

I also have been doing something super, super exciting.  I put dye to yarn for the first time in well over a year.  YES.

Many bright colors of yes.

I"m preparing for a Trunk Show at River Colors in Lakewood on July 26.  I will be there from 11:30 - 3:30 and I'm bringing the pretty:

Lots of the pretty:

There will be some new stuff and some old friends and YARN!  For the first time in a year!  It's very exciting.  Hope to see you there!

Yay Summer of Socks!

Waaaaaaait.  Isn't that a shawl???!