Instead of Blogging

Since blogging less, or at least spending less time worrying about not blogging enough we have:

Been to the beach

Gone fishin'

played whiffle ball in the park (okay, sat on a blanket and watched while friends played whiffle ball in the park)

gardened

and played (this pic is for you, andrea! You totally make my day, even if blogging about the people who make my day stressed me out too much to participate!)

I even knit a little bit.

I also managed to do my taxes, start a manos group on ravelry (you know you want to join), cleaned my house (company came) and ordered new Rowan for fall, among other things.  I also started reading Knitting America, finally, and love it when I thought it was going to annoy me.  It is really well written and well researched which suprised me, I don't know why.  I guess because I have come to expect publishers to reign writers in when they get too interesting.  Jaded?  Me?  No!

Technology Amazes Local Woman

I am not a blogger, I am a knitter. I have tried to be a good blogger. I have tried to care about the people who for some reason or another want to read my blog. And I appreciate those of you who do read my blog. However, devoting the last 10 years of my life to knitting, I have never in my life spent less time knitting. Keeping up with knitting these days doesn't mean spending more time with needles in your hands, it means spending endless hours with a mouse in your hand, updating a blog that will never be updated often enough to keep readers happy, listening to podcasts, perusing patterns on ravelry, sending comments, favorite-ing the project of that person you like or want to like you--when the hell am I supposed to spend time on my ACTUAL KNITTING?! Something is wrong when the time that I do actually spend knitting feels riddled with guilt for not updating my blog or getting out my camera to document every minutae of progress on a project. It is incredibly frustrating to me to be seen as a less good knitter because my graphic design isn't as good as the next person.

It's like the Powerpoint-ing of America, but knitting style. Power-pointing? Hear me out: Powerpoint is ruining creative process, and ruining business and academia in this country. If you cannot use Powerpoint no one will listen to your idea, even if your idea is incredibly brilliant. If it doesn't fit the Powerpoint format your idea is useless. Why is academic teaching now all relegated to what is essentially glorified overhead projections? That is not teaching. The SF Chronicle wrote an article on the technological dumbing down of academic work and the way that the technological divide has hurt poorer schools by flooding them with technology they can't afford to maintain or use and is taking away time previously used to learn basic academic concepts:

School papers are so dominated by computer graphics these days that students often spend only a fraction of their time on the intellectual content of the report. Strangely, instead of bemoaning d developments like these, nearly everyone -- teachers and parents, principals and politicians -- applauds them. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/30/ING8L39SIP1.DTL)

I can feel the computer rotting my brain. Are the blog-less, or those whose blog is not the be all end all of their existence, seen as less intelligent, less driven, less talented? It seems so. But a blog well-photographed doesn't make one a good writer and knitting projects photographed with good lighting do not a technically proficient knitter make.

Writing about a thing and doing a thing are two different things. I am not a public speaker, I am not a writer. I actually almost didn't graduate college because I owed a teacher a rewritten paper I couldn't bring myself to complete. I don't want to go to grad school because I don't want to write the thesis. I am not a writer, I'm a maker of things. And there should be nothing wrong with that. Isn't it someone else's job to write about the things I make if they are considered worth being written about? Someone with some training in, you know, writing about things worth writing about? If I am moved, as I am today, to write I will write. But no one should honestly give a flying fuck what I think about the meaningless minutes of my day. We should all have better things to do and care about, like what our cat is doing. Because we are honestly in love with our cat, not because her latest antics, if properly photographed, will make good blog fodder! The more time we spend trying to be clever on our blogs the less intelligent we become.

Then on the flip side there are all the things that technology makes easier and faster.  Old methods of advertising are no longer working, or simply aren't viable. Paper mailings are dreadfully unsucessful, not to mention all the paper that is wasted. People expect amazon.com-like personalized advertising. We gave up on our newsletter mailings a couple of years ago, deeming them not worth the expense, time or resources. But what happens to the knitting customer who inevitabley calls once a month or so asking if we have a catalog we can mail her? Do we have a newsletter we can send? I have to say no. This woman must depend on a larger company like Patternworks who can afford to meet her non-internet needs or she can't have access to knitting anymore. Her local yarn store has totally let her down. And if we hadn't, if we decided that was unacceptable, how many of our other customers would we loose as a result? When there is a finite amount of advertising money and time we can spend on projects are we going to update the website and advertise on Ravelry, which will cost us less to nothing and reach many more knitters, or go to the printers with a newsletter and spend hundreds of dollars on postage and address labels and hours of staff time sticking mailing labels and sliding piece after piece of mail through the postage meter? And obviously this is a macrocosm of a larger news media advertising problem.  
I'm not saying I'm going to stop blogging or anything. I know that it is too late for that. Joining the throngs of redundant print media writers beleaguering blogs and those "young upstarts" who write them will not serve me well. But, I miss the good old days when someone would prove their talents by being talented at the thing they cared about, not the graphical beauty of it's dissemination.

I am a knitter, and I sometimes blog too. But I am going to try and spend more time knitting and playing with my baby instead of putting him in a chair next to the computer to sit while I blog.

oh, the cuteness.

Clyde and I have been home with the flu for 3 and a half days now.  I have not been out of my pj's, out of bed or eaten anything more complicated than oatmeal.  But I am feeling a bit better today so I've been spending some quality time with ravelry.  Hence, the short blog post about this.

Excuse me while I go cast on.

Loss

Two weeks ago Max and I were planning on a long weekend trip to Tennessee to visit friends, in particular a good friend who was dying. We were hoping on him being able to meet Clyde, whose arrival he was very excited about. Unfortunately we didn't make it in time, and rushed out of Philly at the last minute to drive 14 hours to middle Tennessee with me, Max, Clyde and Queenie and many suitcases in a snow storm. We arrived, late, in the dark, snowy, hungry, tired (especially me, who is the only driver in our family) and cranky (especially Clyde who couldn't understand why he spent an entire day strapped in a chair). But when we woke up the next morning we saw this lovely sight out of the bedroom window.

and while walking around in the snow we saw this in a pasture! Awww...goats. Our friends have goats and sheep and chicken on their farm and while we were there a baby lamb and two baby goats were born! I have more pictures but for some reason they aren't cooperating.

Wednesday night we arrived at our other friend's house, in the woods on the side of a mountain, for a lovely memorial service.
It was a very lovely warm service, full of friends and food and music and much passing of Clyde around the room. This is an alter for our friend that they made. On the little table there was a dish with his ashes and wildflower seeds. Everyone was encouraged to take some home to scatter. We're going to scatter them in our garden on the island since he never got to come and visit.
And the rest of the time we were there we ended up having lovely weather, and what a beautiful place to spend some time, huh?More to come...
Much knitting happened in Tennessee!

Color Me Psycho

So Grace emailed me today and said:

i thought of you when i read this

http://nymag.com/fashion/08/spring/44210/

it's about new yorkers who only wear one color.

Like this woman above, who kinda makes me want to die. Intriguing, yes, to wear all one color. But the brain reels--do these people have some kind of massive personality disorder? Mental illness? Eccentricity due to overconsumption? Eccentricity to appear more interesting than they really are? Yep. I decide that that is it. This woman buys Chanel shoes in white and colors them with electric blue sharpies. I took a moment to look it up and this shoe:
retails for $670.00, although it's not white.

and this shoe, from designer Christian Louboutain retails for $950. Could someone really take a Sharpie to a shoe that costs more than my rent? I am reading this article mouth agape, unable to restrain myself from the annoying one color wearing people.

And then I get to this lady:
I love her. She's totally amazing. I want to be her one day. Here's an excerpt of her interview:

"Why green?
I’m from Nova Scotia, where green is in your surroundings. I missed nature when I moved to New York. I started wearing green nail polish, and it spread all over me.

When did you move here?
I hitchhiked down in 1964. I had long braided hair; I was a beatnik.

Where did you live?
We used to live on the Lower East Side. A hippie gang was on our block, and you had to know them to get down the street. They had weapons and chains. They babysat for our son.

What’s your son up to these days?
Sam is a mentalist, a magician. It’s classic mind-reading; he’ll memorize a deck of cards. He’s our one and only.

How long have you been married?
Forty-one years. Every Saturday morning, we’d say, “Maybe we’ll make it to City Hall this morning.” We missed a few because we slept late. Finally, we went and got married. We didn’t have a ring, so my husband, Robert, made one out of paper.

Do you have any grandchildren?
No, but I have a grand-puppy. My son asked me to babysit him, and I airbrushed his tail green. Sam flipped out."

And then I start thinking about how green is my favorite color and blue definitely one of my least favorite. You don't think that had something to do with it, do you?

Garter Stitch Appreciation

In 1997 I pulled out some old knitting needles (old yellow plastic ones with metal tops) and some yarn (a skein of burgundy 100% no-name acrylic) that my grandmother had given me, and taught me to knit with, when I was probably about 8 years old. Somehow I still had this yarn and these needles 10 years later, and somehow they made it with me from D.C. to Chicago, where I was going to school. I remembered how to cast on, the e-loop kiddie method, and that was about it. For a few days I just cast on stitches until the needle was completely full and then took them all back off again. There must've been over 200 sts on those 10" needles. I really packed them in. It sort of started coming back to me and one night I tried remembering how to form the stitches. I knew I was supposed to put the right hand needle into the stitch on the left hand needle and then do...something. I tried a few goofy things and then succeeded in forming some kind of...something. I ripped it out and put it back under the bed until the next night. At this point in my college career I had broken up with my alcoholic boyfriend and moved out of our amazingly cheap and large apartment in the Ukrainian Village--for you Chicago-ites it was on Oakley between Division and Augusta, 2 bedrooms for $550 a month. Yeah, that was reasonable then and now I sound old ("back when I was a kid, sonny, you could get a loaf of bread and a nudie magazine for a nickle!"). I moved into a studio above a sex toy store on Milwaukee Ave just south of Division (rent? $400). My bedroom was jammed into this little hallway that led from the big main studio room onto a roof deck. There was a little window in it so I decided it counted as a "bedroom." The kitchen was also a separate room, not just a strip with a stove in the living room, thus, to my mind, turning my studio into a real one bedroom apartment. The bedroom/hallway was probably 5x7 feet. I had a twin bed and it fit in there with no room at the head and a bit at the foot for me to keep a teetering pile of clothes. It was just wide enough for the bed and a person to squeeeze past on the way out to the roof. I loved this room. It was my very own bedroom in my very own apartment. And here I learned to knit. Sort of. I did get it one night, after many false starts where I couldn't understand why this length of yarn between the needles kept getting longer and longer as I knit off the cast on, and when I realized that I didn't need to FILL the needle with stitches and 20 or so would do fine, I produced garter stitch. And decided I MUST be doing something wrong. It didn't look like knitting at all. It was all bumpy and wavy and even with the holes in it it was just all wrong and didn't look anything like my sweaters, which I knew were knit. Screw it. I gave up for another few months or so. I picked it up again a while later after getting a Reader's Digest how to knit book from a thrift store.

I learned to knit and purl and use double pointed needles and all sorts of things from this amazing book. I learned to create beautiful smooth and lovely perfect stockinette stitch and decided that garter stitch was horrible and ugly and useless and a total waste of knitting. Until now.

A simple shawl, all in garter stitch with a little picot edge. It couldn't be simpler. I am totally obsessed with it, even it's little imperfections. If you look very closely at the left side in the photograph I ran out of yarn about 15 stitches before casting off and used a bit of Scottish Tweed 4 ply in the color Sunset to finish up. It's a nice contrast will the blue-y gray of the main color, which is Jamieson's DK in the color Eucalyptus from the dawn of time area of the stash. I love it. It is simple and I didn't need to pay ANY attention, except every 3rd and 4th row I made a little picot. Check the website (hopefully!) later this week and I'll add it, nicely formatted, to the "free patterns" section. This pattern is so mindless it deserves to be shared.

Learning to use the new computer

I bought a new computer for my birthday.  We vacillated between getting another mac (which I wanted) and a pc (which Max wanted).  Now, Max had very good reasons for wanting a pc.  He is in school and he would never have to worry about things not being formatted right.  His disks for his board study guides would always be compatible.  He could do all sorts of useful lifey things. But it was my birthday and I like macs and so I won.  Sometimes I am such a jerk.  

So I have a new computer and I love it.  It is fast and can hold millions of pictures and other useless things.  It can't, however, read the photoshop disk that we have.  I have Adobe Creative Suite on the old computer from a job I had years ago, and alas, not the disks.  So I have been experimenting with having the two laptops side by side and constantly moving my thumb drive between them.  I am sure there is a better way but I am not that technologically savvy.  I did manage to upload a new pattern to ravelry today using that system and I will include the link here too.  I can't get it up on my website because all the guts of the site are on the computer at work.  That's a project for another day.  

The pattern is super simple and I am kinda proud of myself for writing it and getting it online even if it is super simple.  It does take a bit of getting used to how long it takes to get even the simple things done.  It took me six hours to get this sucker up on Ravelry today.  Granted, I was interrupted from my task quite a bit to nurse the babe and eat food (I've never been so hungry in my life!) and play with the baby.  He is starting to get older and it is sort of a shock to (what I thought was) my routine to have him be awake for longer periods of time and need things like entertainment.  A week or so ago it was just sleep, nurse, change diaper, sleep, nurse, change diaper.  Now it's pay attention to me, hold me, play with me, nurse, sleep, change diaper, nurse.  It takes a bit of getting used to--and if what I think is true is in fact true then once I get used to this routine something else will happen.  He'll start moving around on his own or something crazy like that.  

Motherhood

A lot has happened since my last post, as I'm sure many of you could guess.  I promise that after this post I will try not to be baby obsessed.  

So, on November 28th I was pretty sure I was going to have a baby.  I woke up at 3:30 and couldn't go back to sleep.  So, of course I paced the living room and desperately tried to finish knitting the bonnet that went with the outfit I had knit.  My due date was the 30th of Nov. so I had figured I had another week at least of horrible horrible pregnancy and hadn't rushed to finish the little hat.  

Max woke up around 7 or 8 and we decided to go about our day normally.  Me and Max and our housemate Jes went to Satellite and got coffee and snacks and we walked and walked and walked.  I went home and pretended to nap, called my mom and demanded we get Ethiopian take out.  Teresa came over with her baby in the hopes that he would send secret messages to Flippy that the world outside was the place to be.  Mom arrived and brought snacks.  

Then everything got sort of fuzzy.  I remember moments like eating pudding at the kitchen table.  I remember asking my mom to rub my belly and then yelling at her to stop touching me.  I remember taking a shower.  Two showers?  Max was there I think.  In any case, things happened and then there was a baby at 12:45 am.  Doesn't Max look tired?

It was only really bad labor for about 8 hours and then he shot into the world after 15 mins of pushing so from what I hear I'm really lucky.  He weighed 6 lbs 10 oz and was 19 1/4" long.  I kept telling him to stay small.  Good baby.  The worst part of labor?  Contractions.  The second worst part?  Having a cold that includes a hacking cough.  The worst part of postpartum?  The cracked rib that I had to heal from the combo of contractions and coughing.  It wasn't until 2 weeks ago that I could sleep comfortably.  

Here's me and my mom and Clyde in his cool 4-Ply Soft outfit, minus the hat I tried to finish the previous morning.
Okay, so the details out of the way we can get on to the fashion show.  This is his cool outfit in a close up, it's a basic top down raglan cardigan using 2 balls of Rowan 4-ply Soft.  It has garter stitch edges and 5 buttons.  
Underneath the sweater is a bunting I designed.  It's out of the same yarn with an amazingly well matched satin ribbon tying the bottom closed.  

Here's a nice detail of the button.  The top is done in garter stitch because I really couldn't bring myself to purl that late in a pregnancy.  The body is done in the round up to the armhole then some stitches are cast of on either side and it's just knit up the back and front.  

The pattern will be coming soon.  I don't think I took any notes while I was knitting this, I just sort-of made it up as I went along.  So much has happened since then that if I had notes I have no idea where they are now.  It'll be an evening of counting stitches.  Ugh.  Max has been in on the knitting too, and knit this awesome Koigu hat.  He used the James Dean hat pattern from Rosie Knits and just used a size 2 needle and Koigu instead of the size 8's and Kureyon.  Voila!  Genius, really.  This is the cutest baby hat ever and everyone should knit one.  They make babies look like little elves.  

This is Basil, one of my patterns, but done in Koigu.  I have to give Wendy props for doing this first, I am really just a copycat.  I am really hoping that this blanket becomes "The Blanket."  I wouldn't mind knitting it over and over again as one wears out and another one has to sneak into it's place.  

There's more knitwear to come, but I have to keep some fodder for the blog.  

In more news, I just returned from TNNA in Long Beach.  I took the cashew with me and Max came too so that I could experiment with being babyless for periods of time.  It was an adventure but we managed to pull it off.  The flights all went swimmingly and we discovered that the cashew enjoys a good pacifier now and then.  It's becoming more now than then however.  We got to Long Beach Thursday afternoon, met up with Lisa and ate tons of food, fitting for a breastfeeding parent who just traveled for 12 hours.  I ached all over and was incredibly tired and chalked it up to being tired and crammed into an airline seat for so long.  So you can guess at my surprise when I woke up in the middle of the night aching all over with chills and discovering I had a fever of 101.  Yikes!  I had mastitis.  That's an infection in your BOOB!  Oh, god.  Back to sleep, at 8 am called doctor, sent Max to Walgreens, slept.  At 4:30 I wa a new person.  I went to the showfloor and tried to salvage part of my day.  Day 2 of the show was much more successful.  I ran around like a crazy person and Max took the cashew to the Aquarium.  I wish I had pictures but I took dead camera batteries with me.  We did buy a disposable camera but that requires physically going to the drugstore and I'm just not willing to do that unless I have 5 other things I need there.  Doing anything now takes 5 million years.  

I successfully spent an entire day without the cashew.  Whoo-hoo!  I touched great yarn and ate good food.  It was successful in the end.  And now we're home and I am back at work and life is back to normal, sort of.

Cecil

I just finished this. Ain't it so stinkin' cute? I'm calling it Cecil, mainly because Max won't let me name the baby Cecil although it is a perfect gender neutral name. Max says it's too poncy. Oh well. You win some, you loose some.
I don't have any of the specs here with me at work, but I can tell you it is made out of Koigu, it takes 4 buttons and only one skein of the contrast color. Hopefully the pattern will be available soon, but I'm in finishing mode not pattern writing mode. I keep saying that I'll get x, y or z done after the baby is born cuz I'll be home on maternity but I know I'm kidding myself. Ah well, more cute tiny things to come.
Oh, and ps--Knitting Circle is throwing me a surprise baby shower on Wednesday the 7th! You should come!

Knitting is Mine, Again!

Today is all about rest and relaxation. Not really because I am at work but I did eat french fries and a chocolate milkshake for lunch. Malnutrition feh! And I cast on for the ZephyrStyle "Juliet" sweater in the Misti Baby Alpaca Chunky, which I feel very confident about given that I, like Kate, had to knit a sweater at 6 to the inch in 19 days as well. I didn't do as much of the knitting, I just did the fronts and the back and I had Lisa figure out the pattern because I have gestational stupiditis (GS for short), Wendy knit the sleeves, Suz knit the cuffs, and Lisa knit the yoke. Jocelyn and Kate finished the armhole shaping on the fronts and back (I just knit big rectangles, it's all I can handle) and Laura worked on one of the fronts as well. How many members of Rosie's staff does it take to knit a sweater? 7. Geez.

But now it's done and I can knit something for myself. I do give thanks to the horrible 19 day sweater though, something about being under pressure and being forced to knit snapped me out of my knitting stupor. I have been having this crisis that I couldn't come up with anything clever or inspired to knit. I feel like I should be knitting all of these amazing things for the baby, designing the world's greatest baby sweaters and stinkin' cute hats and booties and all sorts of stuff and instead I lay in bed and drool. Literally. My midwife says drooling is normal. She also said that about the nosebleeds. I think she's nuts. BUT! Inspiration struck last week and I cast on Tuesday for what is destined to become a VERY CUTE sweater. Stacy and I are designing it together and I am really psyched. It's blue and white and a cardigan and it's going to have squirrels on it, boxing squirrels. The picture with the glare has a squirrel-y band at the yoke, that's not boxing squirrels, mind you, but inspiration nonetheless (from Everyday Knitting).Stacy is still working on the chart but in the meantime I have cast on the ribbing in O-Wool 2 ply, which is lovely lovely to work with. How exciting.

and I swore I would get better!

Well, after my manic bout of 3 blog posts in a day I have remained dormant. I have to admit that scanning ravelry has taken up a considerable amount of my time, as has sample knitting for Lisa, which I am woefully behind on due to the circumstances of late pregnancy. I am so freaking tired and stupid feeling, it takes all of my energy to hold the needles. I am also having all of those panic moments so whenever I get myself all comfortably (ha!) propped up on the couch to knit my mind wanders to the laundry, the fact that I have no idea how to use our car seat(yes, I am one of those morons that apparently cannot figure out a car seat. I need help!) and I cannot figure out if the stroller I want fits an infant. Ugh. Not to mention that Max hasn't painted the kitchen or bathroom, which is fine, I have faith that he will do it but in the meantime it makes me panicky. God forbid our day old infant should see the drywall seams and un-sanded joint compound. And I just want to stay home and sleep and sweep and wash the baseboards and eat. And, alas, I have no exciting pictures, just wanted to say hello and how are you all?

What would you do...

If you had a yarn store all to yourself for the day?

a. Blog and listen to Journey way too loud, hoping customers don't come in and catch you playing air guitar
b. Plan a new sweater (or three) and pull all the yarn out and then feel guilt and put it back, well, except for the thing you are now swatching.
c. Play with Ravelry.
d. All of the above.

Don't worry Lisa, I did some real work too.
But yes, I am in. Ravelry and I are trying to be friends but I don't understand all of it's intricacies yet. I thought it would be more like myspace, but i can't figure out how to find people except by accident or how to save their info so I can keep checking back but I'm not a total moron so I'll figure it out eventually. Come find me if you are in too!

Blogger ADD

I realize that this will be the third post in 24 hours but I am on a roll. I found this amazing ad in an old knitting magazine and am obsessed with knitting the plaid version of these argyle socks in Gems Fingering that Rosie's just got in. I am even thinking of kitting them like these were in cute little Rosie's boxes to sell in different colorways. I would totally do them in the round though, because knitting socks back and forth is stupid and intarsia in the round is totally easy once you have someone show you. Aren't they amazing? Now to pick colors...


But then I am totally distracted by this Terra, which is one of the lovliest yarns I have seen in a long time. I really want to make this Kimono thing cuz I think it will be amazing in the fall when I'm really pregnant. I just can't decide whether to do it in the colors they show, the Mint and Black Walnut or in my faves Acorn and Butternut (below). The colors as shown really do look great in person, I saw the sample at TNNA. My plan was to work on it tonight at the movies (we're going to see Harry Potter) but the way they have you do the mitering is silly and I kinda want to do the mint part first, using a provisional cast on and then pick up with the Black Walnut all the way around and miter it. They have you casting on the Black Walnut and putting the last st of each row on a holder, then knitting the body, then picking up for the neck and working it together with the live sts you began with. That just seems like too many steps when it could be so many fewer. So, I won't be casting on on the trolley tonight. I need to think on it. What do you think about the colors?

Everybody loves dogs

especially in clothes.

Yea Interweave Crochet, Boo Interweave Knits!

So my submission for Interweave Crochet was accepted by the lovely Kim Werker, editor and blogger extraordinaire! I have been staying silent about it until the package was actually in the mail, but the vest is finished and is in the hands of someone at Interweave as I type unless UPS has disappointed me horribly. I have photos of the finished thing but kinda don't know if I can post them or if I have to make you all wait. Interweave Knits didn't accept anything, but alas, there is always next time. But now it's back to finishing the pile of UFO's, and I am so happy to not be crocheting that vest anymore! (although it was lovely to make and you should all make it when it comes out this winter!)

Getting Sh%t Done

I have done it! I have finished something, finally. My post the other day pushed me to just get something done already. No buttons yet, but it's all sewn together with ends won=ven in and everything. Now I'm off to get sock yarn.

I've been busy.

Well, I done gone and got myself knocked up. The big boobs are really the best part of the above scenario. The swollen feet have to be the worst. I have decided that the whole cliche of "barefoot and pregnant" is really because the gal couldn't fit into any of her shoes, not because her man won't let her have any, which is always how I interpreted it. I wear these hideous 1990's era flip flops from Target every day. Even when it rains. My feet are like one big blister scab of doom from attempted efforts to wear real shoes. So, I have been busy...vomiting, sleeping and crying mostly, and that is why I have not blogged in so long. I did manage to pull together the Gertrude post, which I hope you will all appreciate much more now that you know I did it when I was 6 weeks pregnant. Ugh. But now things seem to have taken a turn for the better that I'm in the glorious and coveted second trimester so I'm back in buisness until October or so when I'll start getting tired and cranky again. But I have been knitting tons of stuff, if not getting anything done. Proof pathetic:This is the first thing I started, back in March, so thankfully I am nearly done. I just haven't touched it in over 6 weeks even though I only need to finish the shoulders on the fronts and sew the damned thing together. It's awfully freakin' cute. It's Penny Straker's baby owl sweater thing done in Rowan 4 ply soft, which I didn't know until I was pregnant is MACHINE WASHABLE! Crazy. So nice.

These are just awaiting their destiny which is to be ripped out and begun again. The gauge is so hideously off that they are really for a toddler which defeats the name of the pattern entirely, Baby Bottoms. It's a Knitting Pure and Simple pattern and it's so godawful cute I really want to knit them, or I guess I really want them to magically be done. They are being knit in Owool Balance, which is an organic cotton and wool blend, not machine washable but I'm not sure I care so much, most of my stuff I throw in the sink so why not baby's too? I know, those of you with children are laughing at me and my poor poor disillusionment right now but let me have my dreams of being knitter/mother extraordinaire for a little while longer.

Okay, these are just pathetic. No one tells you that when you get pregnant you get real stupid. No one ever told me that! It's for real, like I can't remember anything or pay attention or retain information. And people who have had kids are like, "oh, yeah. That happens," and they say it real nonchalant-like, as if it's NO BIG DEAL! Hey, I don't know about you, but I NEED my brain. And I want it back. I think it is back, a little bit, but maybe I'm just getting used to it. But the point of this is that these cute cute baby pants thingies have two feet, right? and 2 legs and a body and shoulder straps. Okay, fine. So you knit the two legs and then join them and work the body in the round and so on. But! Here's the stupid part! I knit two identical legs and joined them the way you are supposed to, with the increase seam on the inner leg and...get this...the feet are facing opposite directions. One foot faces forwards and one backwards. For a very short moment I thought, "Well, maybe the baby will be born with..." But I think I will have to reknit one of the legs. I thought for a moment about cutting one of the feet off and turning it around and grafting it on the right way but I haven't decided if that's more trouble then just reknitting. Stay tuned. Oh and it uses Nature's Palette from Hand Jive, which I absolutely love. It's naturally dyed in gorgeous colors and it's machine washable, how's that for contradiction?

These are my two favorite colors of Dale Baby Ull. It is supposed to be a simple fair isle pullover. One day.

This is another Smith Island Pattern Factory Pattern, coming soon-ish. I started it a year ago and then got bogged down when it came to doing the edging. I can't really decide how to do it. The picture is horrible, but it's a little a-line coat and it's crocheted in Koigu. It's really cool in person, but I am a knitter not a photographer. But hey, look how clean the floors are! See, there's something you can appreciate.

And this is a quilt of a topographic map of Smith Island. I started this last summer and went totally wild and then moved to Philly and in a fit of wishful thinking I brought it with me but haven't touched it. It's appliqued and then I was going to embroider all of the marshy stuff and other markers. It'll be great one day, but I don't think I'll be bringing the baby home in it or anything.

This is the pathetic beginnings of an edging for the Baby Shawl in Sarah Don's Art of Shetland Lace. An amazing book that has just been rereleased, everyone should have it. The yarn is Jade Sapphire's 2 ply Cashmere which is an amazing experience unto itself but in this heat, it'll stay on the shelf. What's the point of knitting an expensive cashmere shawl to sweat all over it like a disgusting pig person?

This is also Dale Baby Ull, one of the greatest yarns ever made. And the pattern is Pastel, which is also on the baby ull page at Rosie's. I have loved that pattern for years and remember picking colors for it forever ago with Grace. I have stuck to my color scheme (although for a minute the chocolate brown almost won out over the red) and Grace is knitting the pants / jumper thing and I am making the bonnet and sweater. I think this will be what the baby comes home in. I'll be november, so maybe it will be cold, unless like last year it's 20 degrees (68 farenheit, I am still on my kick that the u.s. standard system is whack. I pretend it doesn't exist).

These are some Anne socks that are also doomed for ripping, but the color is great.

Drops Alpaca shawl from Spring Issue of Spin off Magazine. It's pretty and easy and was a good project when my brain left the building.

So that's about it, except that I finished (mostly) my website!