A Walk in the Park

 

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.

Hexipuff Swap

I've never participated in a swap before, but when the idea started brewing in the Socks that Rawk! group on Ravelry to do a swap to get mini-skeins for hexipuffs, I jumped in eagerly. For each skein of Socks that Rock Lightweight I sent, I would get six mini-skeins back. I sent in Gingerbread Dude and Henpecked, and yesterday, to my delight, I got this back in the mail:

 

Look at the detail on the labels the Swap Mom made! This package completely made my day.

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!

Clara Parkes Knows My Name

My coworkers used to tease me that if there were the equivalent of US Weekly for knitters, I would be all over it. And I admit, I get all fluttery and tongue-tied in the presence of "knitting celebrities." (To writ: omg Jared Flood Touched My Hand!)

I always have been simultaneously fascinated and horrified, and okay, jealous, by the way Steven barges up to knitting celebrities and then manages to make friends with them. Jokingly, the last time he took a class with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, I repeatedly texted him "Tell the Yarn Harlot my name!" And so "Tell [insert name of famous knitter here]" has become our running gag.

Still, imagine my surprise when Steven sent me this gift from Rhinebeck. It's an autographed copy of Clara Parkes' The Knitters Book of Socks.

Clara Parkes knows my name!

Thank you, Steven. I miss you lots, Work Brother.

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:

Fall Cleaning

I'm feeling...not anxious, but a little frustrated about the number of WIPs I have and my now-reduced knitting time, so I'm declaring the month of September to be FALL CLEANING TIME. That means I will not cast on for new things (except maybe, maybe a hexapuff or two) until October 1. I did some spring cleaning back in April 2010 and it worked out pretty well.

I have nine active WIPs and a bunch in hibernation. Let's see how I do.

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.

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!

The One Where We Tried to Go on a Date

My mother came out to Wyoming on the plane with the Butterbean and me and stayed with us for the first part of our trip. At her urging, my husband and I were supposed to go out as much as possible while she watched the the children.

All right! We exclaimed, and at the end of the first full day in Jackson, I met my husband at the base of the gondola to go up to "The Deck" for happy hour. I was still stressed out from the flight with a screaming two month old and a clueless gate attendant who told me to put the stroller and car seat in the wrong place, which led to us arriving in the mountains while those crucial baby items sat on the jetway in Dallas. I needed a drink.

Here's the view from the top of the gondola:

So we had a drink each and some sliders and started on an enormous dish of edaname. Some clouds kicked up, which is common in the late afternoon in the mountains. Our waitress stopped by and mentioned that it might start raining in 15 minutes or so. Then suddenly BANG! A black cloud rolled directly on top of us. The wind kicked up and plates and glassware started flying off of the tables.

We ran for the empty deli that operates during the ski season. The wind whipped around so hard that the gondola shut down and the outdoor grill kitchen had to close. However, the bar was still functioning, and everyone got a second round on the house. To summarize: many people, stuck on a mountaintop, no food, much alcohol.

Husband and I gamely plowed through that edaname and a third round of drinks, because, hey, why not. We watched planes land at the airport and exclaimed, hey, there's our car seat and giggled. The people next to us started falling off of their stools. The waitresses started to look a little tearful.

Finally, though, the storm stopped. Look, a rainbow!

I'm still here

Well, actually I'm in Wyoming. Here, look at some pictures while I figure out where my blog mojo has gone.

The Birthday Hat is still going strong

My "big baby" turned five (yes, FIVE, I can hardly believe it) yesterday, and of course we marked the day by the traditional wearing of the Birthday Hat.

See here for the Birthday Hat in years past.

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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!

Under the Porch

Some kittens from under the porch

My mother had this tough old broad of a Manx cat named Feather. Feather was our Cat Matriarch. Every few years, she'd give birth to a litter of kittens (please, no Bob Barker Flames; this was a barn cat in the 1970s). Before she went into labor, she'd disappear, usually under the porch, and then emerge a few days later with the kittens.

That's the way I'm feeling. Nature is telling me to get under the porch.

But there's only so much hiding one can do with a family to take care of. Henry and I have been watching Dancing with the Stars, and I've been sitting on the couch casting on for every sock pattern imaginable while he explains the complexities of Lightning McQueen to me.

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.