Five Things the Baby likes to do at 5am

1. Come up with new country music line dances.
2. Work out her next Vaudeville routine.
3. Choreograph an Esther Williams style synchronized swimming musical number.
4. Practicing to be one of the backup ladies in the next Jane Fonda workout video.
5. Rehearsing for High School Musical 14.

Getting Situated

That's what I've been up to lately.

1. The dresser that La and I picked out for the baby is in place (for now). La's is on the left, the baby's is on the right. It might be a candidate for refinishing at some point, but the drawer action is fabulous and it has enough room that it should last until she's ready for college.



2. Finishing up some projects that were on the kitchen table. Turns out chenille looks pretty, but it's kind of tricky to maneuver. Very slippery. Might be worth it to pin-baste, like a quilt sandwich. Frankly, I'm glad I made a good dent in the stash of chenille. The set with the ducks is for a friend that just had a baby in October. The pink hearts is for us. The bibs are from Bend the Rules Sewing, the chenille blankets from Craft Apple.



3. A tag blankie for the new baby was on my list too. La loved hers for a very long time and still has a special place for it. Put a check in that box. I "unvented" this concept when La was tiny. The concept is pretty much "Taggies" (which holds their IP near and dear to their heart, so selling these is probably a bad, bad idea.)



4. Hooded Towels were also on the list. I was procrastinating these because it's so tough to sew through layers of towel. Ugh. I didn't break any needles but did get some impressive thread snarls. The pink one is the one that a friend of ours made for La when she was tiny. The bottom one is the one for the new baby, the top right is for La - it has a much larger hood. The friend who made these has made them for her three kids as well - it was neat to see them all hanging up in their bathroom when we were visiting. The hood for the small ones takes half of a hand towel, the hood for La's new one took all of the hand towel, up to the start of the decorative woven part. The flowery trim material is from my Grandma Mercier's stash. It's Waverly and about the thickness of a bed sheet. I have quite a bit of it - not sure if she was planning to make drapes or sheets with them.



5. DH added this one to my list this morning. Not sure how it came up but he brought out his knit hat (admittedly one of my early works) and asked about a fleece hat. I had a remnant that I had just opened and found a pattern online. I put it together while he and La were out on a bike ride. His hat was such a success that La requested her own. The pattern was easy to scale down too, although I could have made it a little shorter. Before I took the picture, I had not seen how much she is starting to look like her dad. The picture in the background is one that La made in Microsoft Paint while I wasn't home.



Oh, and a moment of zen. Did you know that you could do this with "My Little Ponies"? I walked into the kitchen and found them this way.

Who's gonna get it?

La (age 4) really enjoys answering the phone. She's doing a good job of it. Here's her side today:

"Hello?"
"Who is it?"
"Who do you want to talk to?"
"He's camping for the day."
"OK."
"Bye."

It was the monkey's friend Robert. La is supposed to let him know about the call.

Suprisingly, even when the caller is someone she really likes to talk to, like Aunt Becky or Grandma and Grandpa Toothfairy (my parents), she does her greeting stuff and hands the phone over. She makes sure she gets a turn later.

Ladies with Laptops

I'm at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing today and yesterday. I have never seen so many women in technology in one place, I don't think.

This is the camera-phone picture I emailed my husband yesterday.

Post 300: A little OCD goes a long way.

I may have overdone it today. I woke up, made a list, the list sounded not too unreasonable (um. If I weren't in the neighborhood of 30 weeks pregnant and the boys were home.) And I started to tackle it.

Soccer game for La at 9am, followed by swimming at the Y (High of 87 or 89 today. Water was 82. Pretty nice once you got used to it, which didn't take too long.)

Lunch at Subway (was going to be Tijuana Flats, but apparently, now La can read the word "sub" and that's what she picked.)

Dropped off a few boxes of leftovers to the thrift store.

Went to the two used furniture stores in the same plaza. Bought a dresser for the new kid. Also bought a Barbie at Big Lots.

Went to the fancy paint store. Closed 2 hours previous. Went to the other fancy paint store (a block away). Got paint for the girls' new room. (This was the subject of the OCD was getting the house in order and rearranged. The girls will be in the monkey's room, the monkey will be in La's room. While we're swapping, we're going to rip out the 22 year old carpet and put in Pergo. But before that, a new coat of paint while the yucky rug is in there.) This is what La picked out. I didn't see that they recommend a primer until after I loaded the picture onto Flickr.
It's going on white walls, so we'll see how it goes, I guess.

Then to Costco to pick up storage containers to use as swap space as we empty the boy's room for the renovation magic.


Is there any wonder that it was almost too much work to unload the car? I slept sitting up, holding my novel in my hand as La watched a couple episodes of Hannah Montana (is it wrong that I really enjoy the Laverne and Shirley/Lucy and Ethel dynamic of that show?)

Last night I stayed up late and cut out projects while watching "Clean House". Here's what I've got piled up around my sewing machine now.

1. These are mostly done. I think. Need to go back and see where I left off. These are a mix of ones for the new kid and ones for Christmas presents. These have been on the sewing chair for a week or so.

2. A set of coasters for me (Bend the Rules Sewing). And one replacement for the original set. I didn't quite catch all the terry when topstitching the flap closed. Good enough for me, though.

3. Chenille Madness. A childhood friend just had a son. I'm going to send her a chenille backed blanket (ducks) and a couple of coordinating bibs. One bib for me and a chenille backed blanket for me too (green with pink hearts). I prewashed the chenille and was amazed at the sheer volume of lint. But it is very soft and nice now. I really hope it's colorfast, though.

Oh, and look what I found on my camera!

All set for December. The hat was something I winged. I'm afraid (hoping?) it'll be a little big. I think this is the kind of thing, since there is no ribbing, that is much easier to make to the right size if there is a model to try it on before you're committed. If anyone is curious about the hat recipe, I can post it.

Five Things about Pregancy

Not much blog fodder so far. Here's what's been going on

5 good:

1. Feeling the baby kick
2. Eating ice cream every night (Isn't cholesterol good/necessary for brain development?)
3. Debating middle names. Does Eleanor Ruby sound too much like Eleanor Rigby? Will it go away once there's an actual baby? We like the kickiness of Ruby. (Other choices include Veronica, Samantha, and it seems like there were some others)
4. Wondering what this little kid is going to be like.
5. Seeing La look forward to and try to interact with the new baby.

5 less-good:

1. Having the baby decide that 5 am is a great time to take up line dancing.
2. Heartburn.
3. Sore stomach muscles from a very active whipper-snapper.
4. Feeling like I have prostate problems.
5. Not being able to remember anything.

Sick Day

Here's what I did on my sick day yesterday. My strategy was do only enough to keep the OCD at bay. Today I'm home too - took care of some stuff in the morning, currently waiting for the cable person to get us set up with a DVR (it's amazing how much economic power a 4 year old has. This is probably another blog post, but there are some things that continually amaze me about 4 year olds. For someone who sleeps with a lovie, and only recently stopped sucking her thumb and can't yet tie her shoes, (a)she wields quite a bit of financial say-so and (b)she plays soccer pretty fiercely. ), and then am taking La to her "big sister" course at the fancy new hospital for women and babies.

Yesterday, I threw "Singing in the Rain" in the DVD player and did some finishing -

1. The baby hats:



2. The baby sweater - now seamed and with buttons



3. Dh's sweater - now I know where I am. I took it off the needles and put it on scrap yarn to get a precise measurement. I have 2" from the red line to the sleeve join. I haven't worked up the gumption to wind yarn for the sleeves yet. But soon.



4. And. Um. I started a baby hat to go with the baby sweater.



I got a great comment yesterday from BB about catching the edges during top stitching. Seems like the secret is to leave a little more seam allowance on that edge, so there is a little more flap to tuck in. Worked brilliantly. Got the rest of them finished this morning.



Also today, I patched up La's shorts. She did some stain removal the brute force way this weekend - and cut the spot right out. Lady MacBeth has nothing on her. I was not there for this, and DH was pretty upset with her. Patched it up with a square from the same batch of charm squares.

There are some "frankenstitches" where I zig-zagged around the actual hole to try to keep it from fraying more. Hopefully the pinked edges of the patch hold up too.

I feel like doing more sewing, but I'm just not sure what yet. I really want to start a quilt, but am really trying hard not to. None of the stuff I've got queued up is appealing.

Have I mentioned that I hate when DH is right?

I haven't been feeling well for a little more than a week. After having to take La swimming by himself twice this weekend (oh, the humanity!), he lost his patience with me feeling crummy. You know why this cold hasn't been going away? Cause it might be a sinus infection. Go figure. I kept thinking that I was feeling "almost better" except for that really strong urge to take a nap, which I was attributing to being pregnant.

So, here's what I've been up to:

I brought the Monkey to a Boy Scout popcorn Show and Sell at the Publix that is in walking distance of the LYS.



Click on the picture to see how it's earmarked.

Also, got this:

It's going to be a couch blanket for La and the baby. The cream color is Cascade 220 Superwash. It's a basic mitered square started from the center, kind of like the squares for the knit along or like the Evelyn Clark blanket pattern. It's sort of muppet-esque, but not too hard to work with.

I've also been picking up DH's sweater from last Christmas. It's going to be an EZ Saddle Shoulder sweater. I think there's an inch or two til it's time to join up some sleeves and do the tricky part.



And, most newsworthy, I finished knitting the sweater for the Whipper-Snapper.
Just needs seaming and buttons.
Here are the buttons La picked:



And, on the sewing machine:



I picked up Bend the Rules Sewing. Neat book. These coasters are from that book and are intended for a Christmas gift for a friend, if they're not too wonky. Otherwise they're for me. One thing I've figured out is that it's worth cutting the backing square generously, then trimming it down nearly to the seam allowance before turning it right side out and top stitching. The top fabrics are squares from a charm pack I picked up aeons ago and the back is a gray-green terry cloth that I found in the remnants bin. There's no middle layer, thinking that the terry is going to add plenty of absorbancy. I've been having trouble making sure that I catch both layers in the topstitching to make it get closed up.

Omnibus

I made these Bitty Booties for the whipper-snapper. They're from a pair of socks I knit for myself and then someone accidentally felted in the dryer. It's very hard to machine sew this fabric that the socks made. I'm on the fence about blanket stitching the opening. It would probably benefit, but I would need to look up how to do it. They are so darn adorable, I kind of want to make another pair out of polar fleece.


I made this drawstring bag for La to keep her gameboy games in. The monkey found a bunch of his old games and passed them on to her. It quickly over-flowed her gameboy binder. The bag reminds me of the marble bag my mom sewed for me when I was a kid (out of purple and white velour).

Saturday night, I found myself antsy. And couldn't find the remote. I figured I'd whip on something I had cut out recently and have something blogworthy to show. Then I realized that the reciever of the whipping up reads my blog from time to time and it was a Christmas present for that person. Well, one more gift mostly done. I got to a point where I needed some help and put it away for a while.

Friday night, La had a burst of play in the living room. The kind of burst where it becomes very hard to navigate the room. From the sounds of it, she was playing "family vacation". She and her baby Braedyn do not travel light. The chair fort in the corner was their hotel room and before that, it was their rental car.

For the past month or so, we've had a rogue pumpkin plant growing on top of our front hedges. This may not be the best time to come photograph our house for "House Beautiful". Hopefully the HOA doesn't notice. We just want to see if we'll get any baby pumpkins out of it. After waiting and waiting for nature to take it's course, I finally looked it up - in case you were wondering, here is a place where they talk about pumpkin reproduction. Now we're keeping an eye out for when a momma flower looks like it'll be opening soon.

I don't know why, but I think this has some potential for a sock yarn palette.

Entering an OCD phase & I hate when my husband's right

Well, actually, if we're both right, it's fine. But when he's right and I'm not then I'm not as happy about it. Since I've cut way back on my knitting my arm has felt much better. And it's not very much knitting before I start to notice some discomfort or oddness about the pinky and ring fingers. I'm down to the home stretch on the baby sweater. I did forget to put in a button hole where it was supposed to be (2 rows in) and just put it in when I remembered it (about 8 rows in). Like heck I'm ripping it back for a button hole.

I've found myself in an unusually OCD place recently. I was tidying up the children's department of our library. It wasn't that it was particularly messy for the children's department - but I couldn't stand that the puzzles weren't put together, and that there were crayons and abandoned library books on the floor. I. Had. To. Take. Action. I also cleaned out the snack bowl. This does nothing for the list of major cleaning/sorting/rearranging/making room that I need to do, but makes me feel better for some reason.

After picking out material a few weeks ago, Saturday night, I put this together.



I quilted the outside envelope a little because I used cotton batting inside. I wanted it to still look/work nicely after washing.

Here's how it looks when you open the envelope:



And the lining's full effect:



The lining is left over from the back of the Electric Sherbert quilt, the ducks would have been the back to my nephew's quilt, if some other material hadn't run all over them. The tasteful yellow flowers were from when I picked up this pattern. (Aside from the pattern, I managed to only buy a couple of fats for me, and some fabric for pants with pockets for La.)

(I'm not sure what happened to this photo. This is not how it looked when I downloaded it from Picknik. But then again, I was doing a couple things at once so it could have been.) At first glance the pattern looks kind of complicated. We'll see how it goes. It's in time out until it starts to look easier.

When I was cleaning my room the other day, I came across these socks.



Sadly, I think they were felted on about their 2nd wash. I didn't have the heart to throw them out. They are going to find a new lease on life as a pair of Bitty Booties for the whipper snapper.

A Quandary

So, about that knitting and carpal tunnel thing. I checked in with the doctor (via their web site) about the carpal tunnel and mentioned that my husband wants to know if I should stop knitting.

This is the nurse's response:

I got your message to the Dr and he said that you do need to stop the knitting. You can discuss further at your next appt. Thanks Brandy

Poop. I hate when he's right about that kind of thing. And it does seem kind of reasonable that that would be the grownup thing to do.

But I'm 3/4 of the way through a baby sweater sized 0-3 months (for a December baby in Florida) that I was kind of hoping she could wear home from the hospital. OTOH, I don't really want to do anything that could make the carpal tunnel stuff last post-partum. I've got less than 7" left to go! 1/2 with about 50 stitches and 1/2 with about 25. The agony!

My Adventures in Triage

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, my left arm was tingly numb. I called the nurse line at the OB's office on Tuesday when it became obvious that it wasn't just going away. They said to go to Triage at the fancy hospital for Women and Babies. I felt silly going, so I didn't.

Wednesday, my left arm was still numb and tingly. It was still usable, just making me a little extra crabby. It seemed to get worse and better. It wasn't keeping me awake. So after work Wednesday, I called DH's little sister the paramedic to get a second opinion. She kind of freaked me out a little and I went to the grocery store to get my blood pressure taken after dinner from that goofy machine outside the pharmacy. It was "high normal", and I think my arm is too thick to get an accurate reading so I went home and got my knitting and went to triage. I also got to thinking about how I needed to take my health and the baby's health seriously - I would feel horrible if something happened to the baby, and I don't want to miss out - and started to feel like a selfish jerk for not doing a better job taking care of myself (pregnancy drama?).

So, I went to the fancy hospital for women and babies triage. Wait for an hour. Get my vitals taken (hurts like heck to have your blood pressure taken on a tingly arm), hear the heartbeat (delightful and she found it even faster than the doctors usually do), talk to the nurse about this arm business. She calls my doctor. Comes back after a little while.

Sounds like carpal tunnel. Fah. Of course! Software Engineer. Pregnant and my joints are starting to be out of whack. So I'm supposed to keep track of it, let them know if my arm becomes unusable, and follow up in the office this week. I went to the intranet site at work and read the article about ergonomics and adjusted my chair as much as I could. Since I've been paying attention to it, it's been much better, and from what I've read on the internet, it should go away after the baby's on the outside.

That husband of mine thinks I need to stop knitting in the mean time! Hard to fathom! I'll need to ask the docs about it, but I'm hoping I can keep knitting. The little lemongrass sweater is almost done. The blanket is almost halfway. I was just starting to think about socks for me!

The titles, they fly right out of my head well before their time.

Catchy, hunh? And tells you just what the post will be about? That was my goal. :^)

I finished the knit hat for the whipper-snapper. Well, except for weaving in the ends and making the pom-poms. Instead of figuring out the decreases in pattern, which believe me, I did try, I ended up with a square hat. I can't help but think they're darn cute.



I've been tackling the pile of fabric on the sewing dining table too. The souvenier pillow cases are done.


From L to R: for the whippersnapper, La, and the monkey. La and the Monkey have already put theirs to use. Reports are the fabric is soft.

Also, another pair of shorts with pockets for La. Clearance fabric from Joann's. Seersucker. Has a silver thread running through it every so often. This really reminds me of my mom for some reason.



Here's a closeup of the closing for the elastic casing. I've started sewing it with contrast thread (project thread still in the bobbin - the contrast only shows on the inside). This way 4 year olds and their mothers can tell which side is the front. Without having to think back to the pattern and that the "big notches" were in the back.



Well, DH's socks are really almost done. 1 or 2 rows until the toe decreases so maybe I can get them done tonight. Have a good day tonight.

A hat for the whippersnapper

Last week there was a baby shower for a lady at work, who is having a boy. I made her 3 recieving blankets, a little spiral rib hat (like this one - same yarn and everything), baby tylenol and gas drops (cause you don't want to have to argue about who gets to run out and get them.) The hat was a big hit.

At the same time when I was knitting the hat for the work friend baby, I was also consulting with DH about what color hat to make for the whippersnapper - gave him some choices of purple yarns I had on hand and he picked one - a lavender cotton-ease. But later I asked him what color yarn for a hat, and he said pink. Later, as I was knitting the blue hat, he was confused by my choice of yarns for the whippersnapper. Smart man didn't say anything about it as I was knitting it and when I told him it was for the work friend, when it was nearly done, it all became clear.

So, the whippersnapper will have two hats (so far):
A plain lavender cotton-ease one, and a pink one. The pink is some Bernat Cashmere Blend that I picked up at Joann's last week. I had a lot of trouble finding what I was looking for, and I'm still not sure that I did. Turns out the "blend" is only 5% cashmere, 95% man-made fibers. It's still very soft. I'm winging it on the pattern. 60 seems like a great number, but it is not divisible by 8. (I wanted to do 4 stitch cables + 4 reverse stockinette). I haven't quite come up with a strategy for the decreases yet. We'll see.


In the pregnancy woes department we have two things:

1. I messed up the sweater for the whippersnapper tonight at Boy Scouts. It was the parent's committee meeting. I got to a part where I should have read the directions. I didn't. I need to work up the courage to get it back to a good spot. Not like a zillion rows or anything. But still. I'm not sure why exactly I'm blaming this on pregnancy, but I am (cause otherwise I wouldn't be knitting a baby sweater? Cause otherwise I would have stopped when I got to the part with the directions? Probably not.)

2. Maternity pants have major usability issues - A. Mine seem to have a lot of trouble staying up. And with the shorter maternity t-shirts these days, that is a classy look. With normal pants, this can be mitigated by wearing a belt. Maternity pants do not have belt loops. B. Frequently they don't have pockets. Even the jeans. Luckily most of my pants have pockets (from the Gap). It's just the jeans that don't (from Penney's), which I find to be ironic in a very annoying way.

In sewing news, I tried sewing shorts for myself again. I used a pajama pattern. I took measurements. I did not believe them. I made a size XXL (XXXL?) when the measurements said L was OK. I figured I would need the room down the line. I got upset when the pattern pieces did not fit on the half-width of fabric (the actual size I probably need would have fit). They're fine for pajama shorts. I'm calling this one a success. They are probably the most unflattering things I own. But now I know and can make them in actual shorts material and have "nice" shorts. I'm toying with the idea of using the pocket piece for the robe in the pattern to make myself shorts with pockets (and/or pants with pockets).

School started today. The monkey started 8th grade and La started VPK (state subsidized voluntary pre-k). Sounds like everyone had a good day.

Whipper-snapper round-up

Well, we had the big ultrasound. Everything is where it should be, there are no soft markers for anything, we are still on target for December 22, and it looks like we're having a little girl. I really want to cast on for a hat now. :^) I have lavender cotton-ease that is calling my name!

That big-block quilt that I've been working on? Now it's for the new baby.

I got some advice from my in-house design consultant (my husband the architect), and made narrow stripes of pink. I like it, but I can't help but be reminded of cinderblock construction. So, I'm calling the quilt "Cinderella block" in my head.

This is the fabric that I have for the back. It's a little wild and crazy, but it really picks up a lot of the colors:



And for knitting projects for the whipper-snapper, I've been making some progress. Slow and steady and all that:

The sweater back is done, and I'm starting on the left front. I really like how the yarn is doing. STR Heavyweight in Lemongrass.


And the "ketchup and mustard" baby blanket - I might need to stop having Dh help me. :^)
It's almost to the hypotenuse. Today it's taking the form of a manta ray.


In other projects, I've been whipping up recieving blankets:
For my sister in law, who uses them for privacy when nursing in public:


And for a coworker's baby shower this week. I was going to go in on the group gift, but then I thought of this (and had the fabric on hand).



Oh, and these pieces of hand-dyed fabric were souveniers from the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum - destined to be pillow cases for the kids: LTR: the whippersnapper, LaLa, and the Monkey. Now I just need to go back and find that online pattern. Or use an existing pillowcase for dimensions.