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.

I might need an intervention

For the record, the first day of DEAR was a failure. I got into bed, opened the book, and fell asleep. This morning, I woke up with a migraine, so reading was out for that window of time as well.

This month, I finished two garments for Michael, a Beau by Cosy out of Malabrigo Worsted, and a Baby T-Shirt Vest out of Madelinetosh DK. The first is totally whimsical; the second is a project I made to fill a hole in his wardrobe. I love vests on babies: they add warmth without adding bulk and there are no sleeves to get sodden when babies stuff them in their mouths.





The problem is, of course, that babies outgrow these things quickly. I have a bunch of knits that I've already had to put away, and I think Michael may have reached capacity on his knitted wardrobe for now. I think it's time to focus on projects for bigger people...like myself! It's almost the time of year when we set knitting goals, and it will be interesting to see how mine shake out for 2012.

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.

Tri-Terra Cardigan

Last spring, I eagerly volunteered to test-knit the Tri-Terra Cardigan for Cosy. I knit almost the entire sweater before all heck broke loose and I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and the date of my c-section was moved up. I quickly wrote up my notes of what I'd done so far, sent them to Cosy, and handed off the sweater to Yvonne to finish the i-cord edging at her leisure, because she is awesome like that.

I finally blocked the sweater yesterday! The body is knit in Steadfast Fibers Wonderful Wool in Copper. I love this yarn a lot, and I'm sorry the store doesn't carry it any more (but I'm glad I have a sweater's worth in green in my stash!). The stripes are Cosy's Rainbow Chard. In retrospect, I think the top two stripes aren't contrasting enough, but the colors overall are fun, and I loved working with Cosy's hand-dyed yarn. Go see her this weekend at the Indie Knit and Spin!

Football

I tried and tried to get pictures of Michael wearing his Steelers baby booties, but his little feet move too quickly for me to get a really good picture.

And honestly? The news coming out of Penn State is enough to put me off of football for life. As the mother of two little boys, it is really difficult for me to form any articulate thoughts at all, other than wanting to throw up. I love Pittsburgh. I love the Steelers. But I think it's time we question the culture of football, because, Penn State aside, we live in a city where we cheer on a rapist every Sunday. I thought I was okay with that if I focused on the rest of it, but I'm finding out that I'm not. I'm really not.

Photography FAIL

I have been reading too many Mommy Blogs with photo tutorials, because on my walk this morning, I saw these lovely piles of leaves in the park, and my first thought was, "Oh! I'll stick my kid in the leaves and get a charming picture!"

Um, no.

That Darn Vest

After a complete restart and several time-outs, the Pepo Pie is finally completed! My little sartorialist requested a purple vest and declared this color on the Cascade 220 wall to be "perfect."

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

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 This No Casting On Business...

I should not have given myself the out of being able to cast on for hexipuffs. I got distracted by puffs, and I also have been in some serious denial about how little time I have to knit (and to blog). The month of no casting on was not really a great success.

I did finish two pairs of socks in my pile.

Cotty in madelinetosh tosh sock in the Foxglove color way, part of the Year of Stash Socks on Ravelry:

Breaking Hearts in Socks that Rock in Cozy Fierce Scummy Girl, part of the Socks that Rawk KAL on Ravelry:

HEXAPUFFS!

Isn't everyone in the knitting universe making these addictive little puffs for the Beekeeper's Quilt by Tiny Owl Knits? I haven't seen a pattern go this viral since the February Lady Sweater.
Other folks seem to have elaborate themes and color schemes for their quilts. I'm just taking a mindless "knitter's life" approach and using up the scraps I have. It's the perfect knitting for the short spurts of knitting time I have while the baby naps.

I'm glad to have this cheerful project because my other main knitting has been chemo caps for a friend who was recently diagnosed with Very Bad Cancer. These are a Meret in Malabrigo Worsted and a Tretta in Vintage DK.

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.

More Deep Stash Diving and Malabrigo March

I bought three skeins of this Amaroso Malabrigo at least three years ago in the first flush of my love affair with Malabrigo.

 

It tried to be a Juliet, but after three false starts, it went back into the stash.

When Blogless Brooke found out she was having a second little girl, the Malabrigo cried out to become two In Threes. I never get to knit little girl patterns, and the match between pattern and yarn was undeniable.

 

I made a 0-6 month size and an 18-24 month size (which looks like it could fit up to a three year old). I used two and a half skeins, and both sweaters took under a week. 

Happy Malabrigo March!

Deepest Stash

I have, inadvertently, been knitting from my deepest, darkest stash lately. I bought one solitary skein of Brooks Farm Four Play, a wool and silk blend, at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival at least three years ago. The put-up at 270 yards per skein is generous, but the "perfect" project never came along, and it's been languishing ever since. The yarn has a delicate sheen from the silk, and the tonal dye is beautiful and subtle.

On Oscar night, I decided that I was just going to use this yarn, and I cast on for 198 Yards of Heaven.  Because I had extra yardage, I did an extra pattern repeat, but ran out halfway through the edging. I also realized one row into the edging, that the pattern made no sense, and when I checked Ravelry, I saw that the pattern I'd printed out a year ago had been revised with a completely different edge. So much for printing and organizing patterns when I see them. I ran out of yarn halfway through the edging, but I like the final results better than the original edging, which looks heavy and takes away from the main motif.

iPhone photo

The whole thing

Obligatory Hipstamatic Shot

Unfortunately, because it's only 270 yards, it doesn't count for 11 Shawls in 2011. Still, other than the pattern discrepancy, it was a quick and easy project and an excellent match of Deepest Stash to pattern.

More for that Poor Second Baby

Really, the poor dear. My mother and I started to go through the newborn clothes I'd saved from Henry and we found sleepers with the tags still on them. Still, with twelve weeks to go, I feel like time is running out. I made a huge list of things I wanted to knit for the new baby, and I haven't gotten to so many of them. I'm also feeling like I want to do some complex lace work before Newborn Sleep Deprivation takes over.

But so far, this is my favorite thing I've made for the new baby: Cosy's Baby Eggplant, in the 6 month size, from Malabrigo Worsted in Glazed Carrot and Lettuce.