I'm back... April/May wrapup

Whoa, it hasn't been 2 months, has it? Why yes, yes it has... I don't even have the 1st trimester tiredness to blame, though I did get diagnosed with mild (pregnancy-induced) anemia somewhere around 26 weeks; daily iron supplements seem to have helped with the residual tiredness - just in time for the 3rd tri sleeplessness to kick in :P. But besides that, I've actually been being productive, and spending time in knitting and Bip preparations rather than blogging!

So this won't be a very profound post, but I'll try to get caught up this weekend - a lovely long weekend, should afford plenty of time for blogging, painting, and knitting... I'll see if I can get through May in this post, June tomorrow, and then can write about upcoming stuff on Sunday. I may or may not stick to this plan, though!

Starting mid-April, I/we:

• Finished my Eponymous Tote (ravelry link), designed by KT, from one skein of lovely soft Malabrigo worsted in "Marron Oscuro", a variegated brown. Seen here before and after felting. Love it! The flap really makes it - I carried it all over Vancouver, BC in June (probably post about that tomorrow) stuffed with guidebook, GPS, map, wallet, etc. Good thing I'd sewn the button (which I got in Japan a year ago) on extra-firmly! Pictures here are before and after felting - as others have commented on Ravelry, Malabrigo felts extremely quickly and well, so the cables are a bit obscured afterwards, but they are still visible and definitely provide structure to the sides. A joy to knit and use! Thanks again, KT - what a great birthday present!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Went to Boston (see previous blog post in May!), where in addition to hanging out with family, I finished a Mr. Dangly for my cousin's baby Braden, who was born right as we were flying (or maybe the day before?). He's the second of 4 cousins' kids (counting the Bip) who are due this year, but the first I was going to meet in person. The orange is Rowan Purelife Organic cotton, which my SIL gave me for my birthday, and the blue is a bamboo I picked up at the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival last year. I knit Mr. D. in the round rather than flat. He's a pretty quick knit, and hopefully his dangly arms and legs and bobbly head will make him a good infant toy.
  
  
  
  
• Returned from Boston, and went to family gathering in Oregon to meet baby Braden. He's only 9 days old in this picture. Aaw. I think this is the youngest infant I've held til now - so tiny, with arms and legs still "sprung". Can't wait to see him again in a week at the big family reunion at the beach!(I can't believe we'll have one of our own of these in just 2 months or so! Yikes!)
  
  
• Finished a pair of baby pants ("Itchy Fingers Longies" - sorry non-Ravelers, the pattern is free but hosted on Rav) for expectant (father) coworker #1. Ended up delivering them to dad's (empty) desk the day baby Max was born - so he didn't receive them til his dad got back from a 2-week leave. These were fun, and I have no idea what size they are (maybe 6-9 months?) - I told the coworker to tell me when they fit, just for my records :). They're kinda big in the rear end which will hopefully accommodate their cloth diapering. The body of them is 2 strands of sock yarn held together to approximate worsted gauge - and the pattern is customized to your gauge anyway. One strand is grey, the other the same variegated reds/oranges that I used in Carl's hat. You can see the grey ran out at the bottom so I doubled up the red, and when that ran out I did the cuffs and waist tie with a single strand of the grey eco-wool I had left over from my vest. And I'm still not sure they're long enough - see above about having no clue on the size! Anyway, they were a good stashbuster since they took up 2 skeins of sock yarn.
  
  
• Knit up 3 washcloths for expectant (pregnant) coworker #2: Garterlac (to learn entrelac), KT's eyelets and ridges (quick and satisfying, maybe the first thing I have knit in just one day), and Grr from Knitty (super cute but a little fiddly). You should be able to tell which is which in the pictures - for the non-knitters, Entrelac is a technique where you change direction in the middle of the knitting, making stripes move in different directions :) We'd just taken a baby-care class , and the concept of sponge-bathing a supernewborn was firmly in my head. Now I just need to work up some washcloths for the Bip (maybe good beach knitting?). Aah, sorry about the pictures, Blogger's image placement is always a bit wonky, and I don't have the energy to try to get it perfect. You can see that Sasha, in her accustomed atop-the-couch position, is a willing washcloth model!
  
  
• Knit a present for cousin #2's baby girl Berkley, born on Leap Day! No pics since said cousin may or may not know about this blog ;). If you do, Lisa, I can't wait to see you in a week and meet Ms. B.!! You'll note that that's 2 of the 4 cousins' kids whose names start with B... but there's no pressure on us to continue the trend :). We're still taking name suggestions, but plan to keep it a surprise til he gets here - partly because I have a feeling we won't be able to agree on one definitively beforehand and may have to wait til we meet him!
  
  
• Got and installed a new dishwasher. Oh, it's so nice, it gets the dishes much cleaner than the (20 years old?) one that came with the house! Andy did most of the legwork here since I was not in much position to bend over for plumbing.
• Acquired a bunch of second-hand baby gear from very generous coworkers with older boys, and started to stress out about having a place to put it all... so...
• Sold or gave away a bunch of unused furniture type stuff that had been sitting in the "spare room", soon to be the Bip's room. I was amazed that it all went pretty quick - yay for the work-wide "stuff for sale/free" email list!

So that's mid-April through May. Hopefully I didn't bore you to death! Tomorrow I'll try to blog June. And now, it's time to take our annual sundown 4th of July stroll through the neighborhood and observe what the pyromaniacs, er, neighbors are up to. Fireworks are legal here in the week before 7/4, though only ones that get no more than 6 feet off the ground. That doesn't deter some folks from breaking out the bottle rockets, though! As I've been writing this, we keep hearing rat-a-tat-tat from outside, and at least twice I've asked Andy "is it hailing?" before realizing that no, it's just firecrackers. Happy 4th of July to my American readership!

Oh, and here is a belly pic from June 1st, when I was almost 26 weeks. Between then and now (July 4) I feel like I've really grown - another pic or two tomorrow!

Catching up

Wow, I have continued to be blog-negligent. The funny thing is, I've actually been getting a reasonable amount of knitting done... but let me hit the non knitting highlights first. We had our 20-week ultrasound and found out that... (drumroll please).... the Bip is a boy! We would have been thrilled either way, but it really makes the fact of "baby" in four months feel much more tangible. We're still getting used to saying "he" and starting to think of names...

Here's a set of pics of Mr. Bip; bottom left you see him doing baby yoga with his leg out. At one point he was playing with his toes - so flexible!

Then last week we headed to Boston for a lovely 5-day weekend visiting family. We went with the Somervillians to a sheep-shearing festival and had a lovely time. The nieces were entranced by the animals, and my SIL got a large share of a black-sheep fleece for a steal! We met up briefly with some Boston-area-Ravelers who ooh'd and aah'd over the hand-spun and/or handknit the girls were wearing (made by SIL, of course!)My parents threw a great party with my aunt, cousins and cousins' kids, as well as the Somervillians. These family parties are so much fun, as the adults chat and the kids tear through the family room which contains 30 years worth of toys from my and my brother's childhoods. It's amazing to think that in a year, the Bip will be part of that! (though probably not tearing through things quite yet...). Here's a pic of the younger generation making silly faces for the camera :D

Anyway, I have a few smallish FOs to show off, but in the interests of getting to bed on time I'll save that for a separate post. And those on Ravelry have already seen them, since it is easier to just post the pics there without commentary :). (reminder, I'm Parallel on Ravelry)

Oh, and in the interest of documentation, here's a pic of me (and Andy) at 20w5d along. Now that I'm firmly into the second trimester and have some energy back and am mostly not nauseated, I actually feel less pregnant (except when Bip is moving - then it's either pregnant or "posessed by alien"!), so it's surprising to me to see my belly looking so big in pictures!

FO: 45 and Rainy Vest; and a belly pic stretches my tanktop

Yes, I really did eventually finish my vest, "45 and Rainy" (pattern is "70 and Sunny"). I've worn it a couple of times to work, and it does what I want - adds a nice warm layer to thinner shirts in the office (unfortunately, most of the cute button-down shirts I planned to wear it over are, well, not so much buttoning any more!). The pattern was very nice, easy to follow, and went fairly quickly since we're talking bulky wool (and silk).

But. I chose a slightly larger size than I might have if I hadn't discovered I was pregnant about a week before casting on. This was not a bad idea - but the sari silk I chose also was much bigger than the suggested yarn/gauge (maybe super-bulky?) and ended up pulling down the front. I have to assume that the pattern author's sari silk yarn, from Artfibers (not Knitpicks as I incorrectly wrote originally), is both better quality and more uniform (mine went thin-to-super-thick).

And I think the huge-ness of the silk is what's making me dissatisfied with the eyelet closure - it's really pulling at the front sides (though I do have plenty of ease at my back thanks to the generous sizing). I guess the individual stitches of the silk want to stretch out, rather than pulling the whole garment in. Picture demonstrating this is to the right.

But, but, but... it won't be too long before I'll just wear it open anyway, and like I said, it has been a useful layer, at least over that particular shirt which is pretty thin cotton.

By the way, these pictures were taken by the rosebushes in the interests of having a record of how they looked just a few weeks after pruning. It will be neat to document them growing as I grow!

And speaking of growing... we thought it was time to start taking some belly pictures :D. I don't really have a "before" picture (somehow it felt like it would jinx things to take one the week we found out), but I do have my tank top FO pics from last July. So I figured to start out, I'd put
tank top back on and take a picture.



Now, keep in mind, I'm pretty sure that a worsted-weight, tight-fitting, cabled garment adds at least 4 weeks to a pregnancy. I don't look nearly so huge in somewhat loose clothes (see vest pics)! This was taken at 17weeks 2 days.

One more thing - Sasha also appreciates the vest, especially when I've thrown it on top of the couch. I don't blame her - wool and silk are a nice, warm, cat-friendly combination!

Excuses, excuses: a month with little knitting...

... but, as some of you know, I'm going to start knitting for a little one! Yup, that's the new little knitter-geocacher there, to be arriving around September 9! So part of my blog-absence has been due (in addition to laziness) to first-trimester exhaustion... I've just been wanting to flop on the couch when I get home from work, and it hasn't been unusual for me to sleep til noon on the weekends. But I'm 15 weeks pregnant now, and some of that is easing. Hopefully the "golden trimester" will really begin in earnest soon!

In my not-doing-much-knitting news, I had every intention of re-positioning the eyelets on my vest tonight (in hopes of having a truly FO to present here) while watching a TiVo'd episode Top Chef. And then I couldn't find the eyelets! So, after turning my knitting shelves upside down and complaining mightily, I sat down to write this entry anyway... and just now noticed the eyelets sitting on the end table right behind the empty yogurt cup from my before-dinner-snack (I'm eating a lot of string cheese and yogurt these days... mmmm, dairy). Ack. A prime example of "pregnancy brain", I guess...

Well, I certainly should be able to finish the vest tomorrow, so I hope to have a FO post soon. I'll just leave you with a video of what the cats get up to on those lazy weekend mornings.


Catfight on Saturday Morning from Alison on Vimeo.