Zig and Zag Pram Blanket

The blanket that I made for Michael is featured on the designer's blog today.

What a difference a year makes! Someone turns one next week...

Spring Cleaning: Finished Project #2 Plus Bonus Project

I really loved the Gift Wrap Romper I knit for Butterbean. The pattern is so well-written and yields great results, so when I found out my dear friend from graduate school was expecting a boy, I knew I wanted to knit it again. This friend is not a knitter, so I figured with a newborn, a three year old, and a tenure track portfolio to deal with, she would need an easy care garment. I dug deep, and I do mean deep into the stash and came up with some Berocco Comfort I'd originally intended for a throw for Henry in the colors of Thomas the Tank Engine. I think the colors worked wonderfully together here.



































I also made a little hat to go with.



I couldn't let his big sister go without, so I dug deep into the stash again and made this shrug from a Knitting Pure and Simple pattern out of some Rowan All-Seasons Cotton.

Startitis and Spring Cleaning.

I had been doing really well at finishing things and clearing up my piles of UFOs. It started in January when I whipped out this pair of socks for Martha as part of our Epiphany Stash Gift Exchange at the store.The pattern is Burning Rings of Fire by Kirsten Kapur, a free Ravelry download.

Then I realized that I had a bunch of projects that were at least 75% completed, and it would take little effort to finish them.

I hauled out my never ending Damson by Ysolda Teague in my cursed yarn and finished it. Once you get going on the lace, it doesn't take that long at all.

I finished my Honey Badger Socks, a Socks that Rawk KAL (and another free pattern) from last fall. The yarn is BMFA Socks that Rock in a Mediumweight Rare Gem. I don't have a picture of the completed pair because I gave them to my mother.

And I got out my Owlet, thinking I better finish it before the baby gets too big for it. I consider it done, even though I still need to put buttons on for the owl eyes.

But after that I petered out and then came down with Startitis. Two years ago, I did not cast on during the month of April. I toyed with doing the same this year, but with Startitis raging all around me, I could not promise the same this year. But I will try to control myself and work on older projects.

It's April 1, and I have FOURTEEN unfinished projects. Let's see how I do.

 

Car Knitting, and Yes, I am Still Here

So yeah, it's been awhile. Travel, illness, sleep deprivation, and a mobile baby all add up to blog neglect, but we are still here, still knitting.

And I still haven't bought any yarn in 2012.

Speaking of travel, I needed something mindless to work on during a recent drive to New York City. I also discovered that I lack a plain, non-lacy, gray neck-thing in my wardrobe. I dug out my not-small stash of gray fingering weight yarn and chose a skein of Colorful Yarn Merino Sock that I'd purchased on a trip to Philadelphia years ago...let's just say Henry was still The Toddler and he was in a stroller when I went to this store.

I cast on for Nimbus, a part of this amazingly beautiful, simple collection of gray knits. I love gray. Have I mentioned that before? The pattern, once set up, is easy to memorize and perfect for the car. Off I went!

And off we went! I have one very enthusiastic City Mouse:

And someone who is undecided, but leaning toward Unimpressed Country Mouse:

Christmas Cables of Doom

Apparently I needed over a week off to recover from National Blog Posting Month.

The next time I chirpily announce that I am going to knit the children matchy-matchy outfits for Christmas, ask if me it is July. If it is past July, tell me it is too late for this year. The plan was to make coordinating vests (the Pembroke pattern from Petite Purls) in Christmas colors.

Originally I envisioned the children wearing these for artfully posed photos to send out as Christmas cards. At this rate, I will be lucky to get them done by Christmas day.I have almost the back of Henry's completed. This means I have the front, the finishing, and all of Michael's to go. Michael is real small, so that should go quickly, right? Right?

I Stuck Him in the Leaves Again

Actually, if the light had been better, this would be a halfway decent shot.

Too Many Hand-Knits on One Baby, Part 2

Really, the knitting can get out of hand. The adorable hat was made by my friend Karen. It's chilly this morning, so I stuffed Michael into his Baby Sophisticate as well, and tried to cover his kicking feet with his Zig Zag Pram Blanket.

Part One, in case you've forgotten, is his big brother five years ago:

Hat in Action

We are to the point in NaPoBlMo that I feel a little like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel, but here goes anyway. Butterbean sported Tubey by Wooly Wormhead while waiting for his brother at the bus stop yesterday. The weather has turned cold for real today after a strangely warm period, so it is hat time in earnest now.

How It Really Looks: Baby Albert

Last winter, my mom decided she wanted to brush up on her in knitting, so we chose a project to make together, the Baby Albert (Einstein) coat from Sally Melville's The Knit Stitch.

I decided to liven up the plain garter stitch by using Noro Chirimen. Because the sweater is king of wild in color and made of a silk blend, I thought this was going to be a fun sweater to put on every once and awhile, but not very utilitarian. In reality, it has become Michael's fall jacket. He has worn it everywhere!

Six Months!

Michael turned six months old yesterday! We celebrated with carrots. And a hand-knit bib.

Baby Sophisticate

I've been wanting to knit this free pattern forever, and last year around this time when I found out that I was having another boy, I put this in the "babybrudder" tagged section of my Ravelry queue. Then I started reading that the pattern ran small, and I realized that the specified gauge of 15 stitches over 4 inches in aran weight would result in a loose fabric that I wouldn't be happy with.

I finally cast on for this sweater at the beginning of October and decided to try my luck with chunky yarn. I cast on for the 0-3 month size in Dream in Color Groovy in Cloud Jungle (one of my all-time favorite colorways), using 10.5 needles and 10.75 needles for the sleeves in the round.

After several false starts (I blame the sleep deprivation -- we're going through a really rough patch right now), this was a quick knit, and a well-written pattern. The only downside to using heavier yarn is that this will function more as a coat than a sweater.

New Camera!

I've been wanting a DSLR seriously for at least two years now. Recently, I asked my father, an art professor and a crack bargain hunter, to keep an eye out for one he thought would work for me. He very generously bought me a Canon Rebel, and I just got it on Halloween.

It will take time to learn all the bells and whistles, and I want to learn how to work it manually, but for now, I'm having fun and getting decent results with the automatic portrait and macro settings.

Michael models his Baby Albert

Happy Halloween!

My sister joined us for Halloween this year! Henry's costume is a wonderful hand-me-down from Yvonne, and Chrissy crocheted Michael's Mike Wazowski hat.

How It Really Looks: Sock Yarn Sweater and Gift Wrap Romper

I've been wrestling, off and on for the past few months, with a paid pattern that is poorly written and full of mistakes. The pattern -- which will remain nameless, but I imagine you could figure it out -- has been updated a few times since I started knitting it, but really? The mistakes should have been caught in the test knitting and tech editing stage. I don't mind paying for patterns. I love to support the important work of designers. But when I pay for a pattern, I don't want to pay to be someone's tech editor. I'm only persevering with this project because it's important to my son to have the finished object

So with all that frustration swirling in my head, I thought I'd blog two patterns that were both well written and a joy to knit.

The Sock Yarn Sweater, by Hannah Fettig, knit in Malabrigo Sock in Indicita:





The Gift Wrap Romper, by Carina Spencer, knit in 1824 Cotton. If you remember, this was supposed to be the baby's coming home outfit, but the newborn size came out way too big in the cotton. It fit very nicely at the two month mark!

How It Really Looks: Baby Eggplant

It's hard to find time for knitting -- or for blogging -- with this cutie around.
I've been trying to get "after" shots, pictures of Michael wearing the things I knit for him while I was pregnant. Between his, um, "mercurial" temperament, the cloudy weather, and the limitations of my old point and shoot camera, it's been difficult. But I keep trying.
Here's the Baby Eggplant by Cosy I knit in Malabrigo Rios in Glazed Carrot and Lettuce.

And here are the action shots:

So, did you buy any yarn in Wyoming?

Yes. Yes, I did.

I have to admit, when you work at a LYS, especially with a boss as generous as Martha, it's easy to get very spoiled by the employee discount. If I am in Jackson, I try to buy something each year from Knit on Pearl because I like the shop and feel it's important to support local businesses. But the discount at home makes me extremely choosy, so what I buy elsewhere has to be special.

Fortunately, that's easy to do at Knit on Pearl. I chose my crack, Manos Silk Blend, in this new spumoni color way because Manos is produced by a women's collective and it's not something we carry at home.

I also picked up some Brown Sheep Lanaloft to make longs for the Butterbean. Brown Sheep is "semi-local" in Wyoming, located in the beautiful panhandle of Nebraska.

Finally, I chose some truly local yarn from Lucy's Sheep Camp, a few hours east of Jackson in Thermopolis. This is a gorgeous single ply bulky yarn that I think will be mittens.

I've been busy with the Butterbean, and now my oldest, the former Toddler, is off to kindergarten! I hope to get back into blogging as things settle down and am considering some blog redesign as well. I've been using Blogsy for the past few entries, and am loving the drag and drop features!

Baby, It's Hot Out There

It's too hot to knit. There, I said it. I managed to do a few repeats on The Mountain Chickadee Baby Blanket I started in some Bebe Cotsoy (knitting from stash! go me!) but became overwhelmed by the heat, and of course, sleep deprivation.

Michael is, though, actually sleeping about as well as can be expected. He's doing a couple three hour stretches at night, and has done a rare four hour stretch from time to time. Unlike his older brother, he is a big snuggler, and we're finding he prefers to be held for naps.

The heat means, naturally, that modeling knitwear is pretty much out of the question. I did manage to put him in a modified Milo Soaker from Vintage Baby Knits. I adapted the pattern for a newborn by using a DK yarn (Berroco Comfort DK, which means that it's useless as a real soaker, but super cute for a diaper cover) and shortening the torso. Still, I'm finding that "newborn" means these gigantic eight and nine pounders that everyone else seems to have. Michael was 6 pounds, 12 ounces at birth, and at two weeks, was up to 7 pounds, 4 ounces. So lots of growing going on, but I still had to fold down the waist of the diaper cover.

Michael also modeled this garment in my attempt to take a family portrait. Here's the "good" picture:

And here's how I suspect Henry really feels about his brother:

Meet Michael Francis

On May 10, I went to the hospital for my scheduled c-section. Because of the pre-eclampsia, the birthdate had been moved up from May 24. The only cure for pre-eclampsia is to deliver the baby, so it made sense that any potential risk of being born three weeks early -- and 37 weeks gestation is considered "term," not premature -- would be outweighed by eliminating the very serious consequences of full-blown pre-eclampsia.

The surgery went really well. My OB is a family friend who actually delivered my sister 28 years ago. The only hitch in the pre-op period was that I was too swollen for an IV, so the anesthesiologist had to come in and do it. While the spinal block was much scarier than the epidural I'd had with Henry, my blood pressure was low enough that I didn't need the magnesium drip I'd also had at Henry's birth. (The mag drip is to keep a pre-eclamptic patient from seizing and going into organ failure; it makes you nauseated, sleepy, and completely out of it, and I was glad to avoid it this time and be more present at the birth.)

Michael Francis was born at 2:21 PM. He weighed 6 pounds, 12 ounces, and was 19 inches long. He started crying right away and my thought was "Well, there's nothing wrong with his lungs."

But there was something wrong with his lungs. When we got back to the PACU, the nurses remarked that the baby was wheezing and grunting as I tried to get him to latch on to initiate breastfeeding. I didn't think anything of it, as I thought babies wheezed and grunted. I made the nurse tell me what was happening. He was making those noises because he couldn't get air into his lungs quickly enough. He couldn't latch on because it interfered with breathing. After two visits from a resident from the NICU, they made the decision to take him to the NICU for evaluation.

At the same time, I started to bleed heavily, so what happened after that is still foggy. I'm so glad that before they took him to the NICU, we all got to hold him and be with him.

Later than evening, the nurses got me in a wheelchair and we went down to the NICU. Michael was in triage, on a ventilator, which was very hard to see. They treated him with surfactant, and took a culture and x-ray to check for pneumonia. I won't go into all the details -- I'm not sure that I'm ready to talk about the details -- but in summary, he did have pneumonia and spent seven days in the NICU on antibiotics.

The NICU is a scary place, but it's full of amazing nurses who I'm pretty sure are angels in disguise. If the Rapture HAD happened yesterday, I know they would have been taken instantly.  While Michael had some setbacks (for example, we walked in on Thursday to find he was put on a feeding tube when he'd been taking a bottle just fine the night before), he improved almost every day, and I knew that we were much, much better off than pretty much every other family in that NICU. Slowly, I got better as well, after a frightening incident on Wednesday where I almost fainted in the NICU as a result of my heavy blood loss.

We brought Michael home a week later. Because this is a knitting blog, I have to show you that he came home in not the romper I'd knit (too big!) but with the sock yarn scrap blanket I made.

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Pants

I had another "We may have to send you back to the hospital" incident this week. I'm 36.5 weeks pregnant. The baby has dropped and it hurts to walk. I'm tired. My back aches. And my brain power seems to have gone bye-bye.

In summary, all I can manage is to sprawl out on the couch, watch Glee, and knit baby pants.

A soaker from local friend Maggie Broderick's Knitting Wool Diaper Covers from Start to Finish, knit from scraps of Malabrigo Worsted.

Bad iPhone picture of Elizabeth Zimmermann's February Baby Pants, knit out of half a skein of Brooks Farm Solo.

Two days left!

Well, this was unexpected

So about two weeks ago, I went in for a routine OB visit and mentioned that I had a headache and that my hands had swollen up to the point where I looked like I was wearing Minnie Mouse gloves. Because I'd had pre-eclampsia with my son, the midwife took one look at me and ordered a barrage of tests. Suffice it to say that I took a day off work and spent it voiding into receptacles. I stopped by the hospital on Good Friday to get more tests done and then I went off to work, only to be called back to the hospital two hours later. I spent Friday, Saturday, and half of Easter Sunday in the hospital under observation for pre-eclampsia.

Pre-eclampsia can be some pretty scary stuff.  Fortunately, the doctors determined that my case is mild -- so far -- and sent me home to rest, while moving up the date of my c-section. I'm being monitored pretty closely, and with a few exceptions, I've basically moved back and forth from my couch to the hospital for the last ten days.

This leaves a lot of time for knitting, which you'd think would be great! My first response to the new due date for the baby was to panic, not because the baby was coming early or because I couldn't get the room ready, but because I had no hat for the baby to wear. Hey, we knitters can compartmentalize like nobody's business. So I made a Sweet Baby Cap out of Baby Ull and some sock yarn scraps:

Then I had to finish a bunch of other stuff. Ordinarily, I think this would manifest itself by scrubbing out some cabinets, but since I'm not allowed to do that kind of thing, I have to sublimate the nesting instinct into knitting.

I'm almost done with a test knit for Cosy:

 

I finished another In Threes for my friend's daughter's birthday:

I put buttons on the Rhino Romper I made for Malabrigo March:

And I finished the knitting portion of the Baby Albert KAL I'm doing with my mom:

 

No, I'm not freaking out or anything. Nope.