I have a pre-teen in the house. Actually, I have 2 of them and am thankful for both. This week has been a challenge with my son though. He's been very unfocused doing things and yesterday, I had a hard time with it. For days he has been working on doing the dishes - an hour to an hour and a half and he still doesn't get them finished. I haven't been catching things up for him, but leaving them so he sees what he's not accomplishing. This makes his sister happy, as the more he goofs off, the more days she has off doing them :-) Well, last night, after an hour and a half, and only part of them done, I lost my temper and yelled at him and grounded him. I felt badly about it afterwards, and went and talked to him, telling him I was sorry for losing my temper, but something has to be done. He said he understood, said he was sorry and would try harder, then went to bed.

This morning when I got up, DH asked me when I did the rest of the dishes. I didn't have a clue what he meant. I went into the kitchen and found everything washed!! Later this morning I found out that DS set his alarm clock for 3am and got up and finished everything!!! Not only that, but he's been doing all his chores around the house without being told! I have been in a state of shock all morning! Now there's a boy to be proud of. We decided that since he sacrificed sleep to buckle down - we removed his grounding.

Sorry to have gotten off the knitting track - but I had to praise our son....

Now, on to the knitting topic. I didn't work on DS's sweater last night, but decided to do DD's instead. I needed a change of color. I only have 2" to go on the front before I do the front shaping.

Today I turned DH's sock. Here's what I did for the heel:
K22, PM, K2, K2tog, K1, turn
SL1, P5, P2tog, P1, turn
SL1, K6, K2tog, K1, turn
SL1, P7, P2tog, P1, turn
SL1, K8, K2tog, K1, turn
Continue until all sts are worked (24 sts remain)

Now I'm ready to pick up sts for the instep....



I've seen so many neat stitch markers out lately. You can get beaded, plain, round, hooked, etc. Yah - so were am I going with this? I ended up breaking my chain beyond repair on my ankle bracelet and thought how neat it would be to turn into a stitch marker. I took the little bit of chain left and looped it around and put it in the jump ring. I got a neat marker, but I'm not sure how the chain will be on my needles. Probably not good, but I don't have a jump ring large enough yet. I'll have to make a trip to Walmart and get some. Here's what it looks like now:



Coming up with any ideas for yours yet? :-)