Baby calibration

Malcolm is growing fast! According to the lactation consultant's scale today, he's up to 7lb 10 oz a week after birth - so a gain of 9 oz in a week (and he lost some initially). Even if there's some scale-to-scale variation, he's gaining really well. We're so proud! But oh, our little baby is growing up so fast! :( :)

We want to take a picture of him in the same place every week, to visually track his growth. I'll tag these all the same (Malcolm-growth) so they can be viewed together. We chose the rocking chair in his nursery, with a big stuffed polar bear (his name is Bo, and he's very friendly) for scale. These first two pictures have slightly different zoom levels, and his outfit type is different in each - we (being engineers) will try to control for this better in future pictures. Oh, and this will give me the impetus to blog each week, too :)

Here he is at 4 days old:

And today, at 1 week exactly (camera is more zoomed so some of his growth is artificial, but he's definitely starting to get some chub):

Major update in a quick post

I meant to do a whole August wrapup during Labor Day weekend, but, well... I went into labor! Here's just a quick photo and I'll try to do a longer blog at some point later - I'd been putting it off without time to do a nice long one, but realized I can just post a quick update...

Malcolm Wolfgram (Andy's lastname) was born at 6:32AM on Wednesday September 3. 7lb 1 oz, 20" long, and neither Andy nor I can remember the head circumference (as a knitter, I'm disappointed in myself). He is literally the cutest and sweetest baby in the world, no offense to any of the cuties out there, and we are over the moon with him.


on his birth day in a hospital volunteer-knit hat:
Me and Malcolm, 1 day old:

Daddy and Malcolm (1 day old) sacked out:
2 days old ready to come home from the hospital in a hat I knit (pattern from KT, yarn from Carolyn):
Finally, a video we shot of his newborn walking reflex once we were home. 3 days old!


Malcolm's walking reflex - 3 days old from Alison on Vimeo.

Signing off for now - will update more baby and knitting (probably not so much geocaching in the near future) soon-ish!

June wrapup

Hello again! As promised, I'm trying to wrap up the last 2 months in two posts. Apologies for the somewhat rote nature of these posts... I'm sure I'll provide much more interesting commentary when I actually start posting weekly (or heck, even monthly would be an improvement).

So, I was up to June. In June we got serious about working on the Bip's room, and also took our last "couple's vacation" (we are going to my family reunion in - eek 5 days from today - but that is a family and friends vacation). I also did some more knitting :)

We flew up to Vancouver, BC for a long weekend in early June. I Priceline'd a 4* hotel for a great price (not as great now that $CAD ~= $US, of course), and we decided to get around with cabs and public transit. Turns out you can get a bus/train/"seabus" pass for $9 a day, much cheaper than a rental car + parking! We enjoyed exploring the only major west coast city we hadn't visited before - it felt very familiar and comfortable, a nice Pacific NW mid-sized city.

For some reason I didn't take too many pictures on the trip - I think the camera sort of settled to the bottom of the backpack, and it was fairly overcast/rainy at times. I did take a few, though! Here is downtown Vancouver seen from North Vancouver, which we seabus'd to on Saturday.

In North Vancouver, we took the bus to Capilano Bridge, a fun but rather touristy (and pricey) private park including a huge (pedestrian) suspension bridge over a beautiful gorge, and a series of boardwalks and trails on and above the forest floor. It was neat, but not as informative as I'd hoped, to walk the boardwalk suspended between Douglas Firs. I love the idea in theory, but in practice I guess I'd want a personal naturalist guide and a set of tree-climbing gear ;). I read The Hidden Forest a couple of years ago and really enjoyed its look into old growth forest science and research. Particularly interesting is the role that fungi play in the ecology of an old-growth forest! The touristy park was perfect, though, in that it had restrooms and fairly short trails - about the speed of hiking I felt up to!
Other highlights included a delicious multicourse French dinner in a cute old Victorian house / restaurant, lots of walking in parks, poking in art galleries, a spontaneous ride on adorable teeny ferries, and a busride crosstown to UBC, where we visited the Museum of Anthropology. Lots of interesting native arts, both contemporary and older. Less actual anthropology than we were hoping for, but a good visit nonetheless. On the way back, changing buses, we saw an amusing restaurant - Nunu was my childhood cat!

What else in June? Oh, there was World-wide-knit-in-public day (WWKIP), where I KIP'ped in in the sun with something like 40 other knitters at the local "outdoor mall". We had a lot of fun, and a local yarn store (the Knitting Bee, where I took the Magic Loop sock class over a year ago!) sponsored it by raffling off prizes periodically. I didn't win anything, but some lucky folks took home yummy yarn and books! In addition to the knitters, we also had some spinners who drew more interest from passing shoppers. Of course, we all got some funny looks... my favorite (sort of) was the pair of teenaged boys who slouched by, looking bemusedly at our activities, and finally one said to the other "they're f---ing knitting!" in tones of such disbelief, a couple of us in earshot just about cracked up. It's funny how, as I have become an adult (and closer to a parent!), things like this which would have really aggravated me as a girl or teenager become less upsetting and more amusing. Something about being able to view it more ojectively it as the (relatively harmless) pack behavior of suburban adolescent males trying to fit in... Still doesn't mean I want the Bip to follow their example, of course (heck, next year I'll probably take the Bip to WWKIP)!

Finally, knitting projects and Biproom progress:

For knitting, I finished a pair of baby booties (Saartje's(pdf), the Bockstarck in-the-round way) and a hat (Vine Lace - a Knitting Daily free pattern; requires registration) out of the same sock yarn I had made my "Siffing gloves" from. These were for (pregnant) coworker #3, who had admired my gloves at work. She's due to have her baby girl in a couple of weeks now, and just got off work. I, on the other hand, have about 7 weeks of work left to go. Of course, one of them is a vacation week, yay...

I also finished "swatch" from the "swatch and block" felted bag / coin purse that was on Magknits before Magknits went kaput. The designer graciously sent me the pictures to go with the pattern, which I managed to find in Google's cache. If anyone is interested in making it, I can point you to the cache and to the wayback machine's version of the pattern. My "swatch" came out much bigger than coin-purse sized, more like a wallet, since I'm using bulky wool and size 10.5 needles instead of worsted / 8s. But I want a bigger bag anyway, and I'm adjusting the stitch count based on the swatch. These will be for a raffle and silent auction at late July's big geocaching gettogether at Champoeg State Park. We do a service project which involves pulling up tons of invasive English Ivy from trees in the park - so the embroidered design is supposed to be an ivy leaf!

We are staying in a cabin rather than camping, for which I'm sure my back will thank me. I hope some geocacher will enjoy carrying these on the hunt! I'm still working on the bag ("block"), and hope to get close to finishing it this weekend. Er, tomorrow. Well, before we leave for the beach on Friday, anyway!

As for the Biproom - here is a semi-"before" picture. "Semi-" because we'd already pulled off the flowered wallpaper on the one wall which was blue underneath; and we'd also pulled off the old baseboards (boring dark stained pine) and cleared all the junk out in preparation for painting. Believe me, there was a lot of junk!

The semi-after pictures (room is still not completely done) showcase the beautiful new baseboards and painted white window trim, uniform yellow wall paint, and our assembled IKEA crib! Yep, I assembled it myself (I enjoy following the directions on IKEA furniture; and Andy had done most of the baseboard work, so things were even in the end). (In the pic of me by the crib, I'm about 26 - nope, 29! - weeks pregnant)



Finally, the crib with some heritage quilts and blankets we've been given. On the mattress, on the left is a quilt started by my maternal grandmother and finished by my Aunt, made with scraps of Grandma's dresses. On the right is one made, we think, by Andy's maternal great-aunt (have to verify this, but I'm pretty sure I'm remembering right). On the crib rail, from left to right, are a new baby blanket knit by my Mom for the Bip, an old baby blanket of mine, crocheted by Mom for me probably 33+ years ago, and a vintage blanket which was my Dad's when he was a baby. The Bip will not lack for blankets!

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!

FOs: SIFfing Gloves

I just finished another smallish project and realized I'm woefully behind on posting my FOs on my blog. I'm pretty good about updating my Projects page on Ravelry, but tend to lag on the blog due to the necessary formatting (does anyone else have issues with getting pictures into the right place in Blogger? I have to drag each one down from the top of the page) and the necessity of adding insightful commentary (or not :). But I do enjoy the blogging once I get around to it.

So, let me present my most tardy FO - completed April 12. I finally finished my half-finger gloves (SIFfing gloves), which were basically started towards the beginning of my first trimester and finished at the end of it. Yes, I was a slow knitter, but thankfully I've picked up the pace! I'm still tired when I get home from work, but have plenty of energy to knit while watching TV :DHere they are showing off the almost-clean stovetop. Hey, it was raining, I was in search of decent light!
Pattern: Serpentine Mitts from Mimknits.com, with my own modification to create the partial fingers (will give directions below). Size 7", though my gauge was a little big. They have a lot of stretch due to the ribbing...
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Seduction (50% merino, 50% tencel), less than one skein (a smidge over half, I think). Loved it! Not itchy at all (well, my wool-sensitive husband says he can tell it's wool, but he tried them on and it didn't drive him crazy...), soft, not splitty, great stitch definition... I'll have to procure some more at some point. This was from the BMFA destashing sale last fall - cheap due to some black dye splotches in the pink, though they were much more evident in the second glove than the first, and even so not too apparent. I'm guessing I will use the rest of the yarn for baby booties or something, though it's probably too girly for the Bip (but I know several folks having girls!)
Here's an outdoor, blurry (not enough light for no flash + one'handed photography - it was raining!) closeup of the cabling and fingers. You can see the dark splotchies in the center light stripe. Here are the details of my mods:

a) made the left and right thumbs symmetric by placing the left thumb before the final purls at the end of the round (rather than immediately at the end of the round) - this was for size 7".

b) crossed the center cable the opposite way for the left glove (because I am a geek!)

c) obviously, the half-fingers. For these, I just continued the ribbing up until the length seemed right to start the pinky. I then set aside 12 stitches from the pinky side (having figured out how to divide it up so it was ~symmetric about the fingers and had an even # of stitches on top and bottom) and knit a couple more rounds on the rest, casting on 2 stitches at pinky/ring boundary. Then I divided up the remaining stitches into groups of 12 - 6 from the top, 6 from the bottom. I had found by swatching that 16 is an ideal number of stitches (in rib) for any finger but the pinky, so added 2 between each (either casting on or picking up the already-cast-on from the neighboring finger), except for the pointer, where I picked up 4 from the 2 cast on next to the middle finger.

OK, I hope that makes sense! I had to fudge the ribbing some, but made sure to continue the ribs from the front and back of the palm. I was happy with how they came out - hey, this pattern modification stuff isn't that hard!

Oh, and I have a funny story associated with this FO - I actually finished the second glove while Andy and I were in the audience at a funky theater downtown for a taping of the radio variety show Live Wire. They had Ursula K. LeGuin on talking about her new book! Anyway, I finished them in the first half of the show, and then wore them up to the inevitable bathroom queue during intermission. What do you know, a woman about 3 people in front of me asked if they were handknit, then, studying them, asked if the yarn was Socks that Rock (BMFA's main socks line). What a guess! Turns out she works at Dublin Bay Knitting Co., a yarn store downtown which we had visited earlier in the day! (it's just down the street from a cafe with the yummiest gelato... so when we are free after dinner in Portland I like to wander by.). I was amazed that she recognized the yarn type, even in a professional capacity. I guess I haven't reached that level of Knitting Zen yet :)

FOs on the docket for writing up - my Eponymous birthday tote from KT's pattern, a stuffed monkey-donkey-thing for my cousin's new baby, and (just finished tonight) a pair of pants for a coworker's baby expected any week now. See, I have been getting stuff done!

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!