pants for the baby seamstress

Silly baby loves chewing on the tape measure. She tries to eat my patterns too. Yum, paper. These are the Perfection Pants from Wooly Wonder. We use cloth diapers so these wool pants (longies in cloth diaper speak) are the waterproof outer layer and they're warm and snuggly soft. I used Knitpicks Merino Style. The light blue is called Tidepool and was left over from my ogee tunic and the dark blue, Frost, was in the stash too.I didn't have enough of the light blue to finish and I didn't want an abrupt change to the dark blue so I opted for a slip stitch pattern to make it pretty! I love slip stitching! I'd never done colorwork like this before and it was so easy.

Happy Thanksgiving next week! We're off to California for the whole 2-turkey-dinner-shuffle-back-and-forth-between-2-houses-until-we're-exhausted-
and-the-baby's-cranky kind of holiday. It will be great. Really, it will. Oh yeah, I also get to go to Mike's high school reunion. That I'm not too excited about but I'll survive.

Am I the last one on earth?

Am I the last person out there who has knit a Clapotis? I did this summer and now I know what all the fuss was about. What a great pattern!I used Knit Picks Shimmer in the Happy Dance colorway. I triple stranded it and the result is a lovely fabric with a lot of drape. It's thick enough to really keep out the chill but it's light and airy at the same time. I love it! The alpaca and silk is a fabulous combination. I could wear this every day.

I had a little bit of yarn leftover and I decided to use it to knit the baby a hat. We went to visit my dad this weekend and I knit it while I was there. I was distracted by visiting with all my relatives and, of course, by a crying baby, so I didn't try it on her while it was in progress. Bad decision. It's really cute but a little too big around. The best thing to do would be frog it and start over but I have so little time to knit nowadays that I don't know if I can do that. I thought of taking out the top seam and frogging an inch or so, then decreasing for a few rows when I reknit it. That way, I can flip it over and have the narrower "top" be the bottom so it's snug around her head. I can seam the cast on edge to then be the top. Or, I could just leave it alone and knit a chin strap to keep it on her head. What do you think?

Here's a picture from our trip. This is the southern CA part of my family. That's my 94 year old grandpa on the right! I'm so happy he got to meet his great granddaughter. My dad is next to my grandpa. To see more cool photos (some of my fam, but mostly not) visit my cousin's blog. She's an amazing photographer!

Darn dog!

My dog has done the unthinkable. Something he's never done in the 3 wonderful years that I've had him. He ate my knitting! And not just any old knitting- the first thing I managed to complete since Sairshe was born! I was so happy to have finished something and then, before I could even block it, stupid Bradley ate it. It was a pretty lace scarf knit with Kidsilk Night. A little fuzzy, a little glittery, and now totally ruined. Impossible to frog. Nothing can be salvaged. It feels terribly wrong to throw Kidsilk in the garbage. I think Bradley's suffering from a disastrous combination of baby jealousy and boredom. I would feel sorry for him if he hadn't EATEN my scarf!! And he occasionally gets to curl up on my Boppy. Is that so terrible? Is it, Bradley?! No, I thought not. DON'T eat any more knitting!

My current project (that is staying far away fro the dog) is Bpt from Knitty. I'm using Cascade 220 Quatro in the Jamaica colorway. The color is so pretty in real life. This picture doesn't quite capture it. It's much more green but it's cloudy and blustery outside so I can't get good light for a true picture. I'm doing a turned hem instead of the applied I-cord and I'm undecided on the hood. I'll decide when I get there. Here is proof that the girl is going to be a knitter! We went to an alpaca ranch last weekend and Sairshe loved them! With this kind of beginning, how can she not grow up loving fiber? That's Snow White that she's petting and you can see her cute little baby next to her.
P.S. I hope you like my new look! I decided that it was time for a fresh start and there's nothing like some pretty flowers to get you through the cold, gray seasons.

When I last left you . . .

. . . I was about six months pregnant and knitting and working and waiting for baby. A lot has changed since then! I got busy and then I got tired and then I got hugely pregnant and cranky. I was focused on getting everything ready for the little girl and though I was still knitting, blogging got dropped from my to-do list.

I'm back now! I'm not working (for now at least), not waiting for baby (because she's here!) but I am still knitting. Well, I should say knitting again because there were several months there that I wasn't even doing that.

Between the end of February when I last left you and the end of May, nothing much happened except that my belly got bigger and bigger so I'll just recap the highlights since then for you.

• Baby Sesame was born in the morning on June 2 (only 3 days late) and it was amazing and fabulous. Thanks to Hypnobabies, I had a wonderful, relatively short labor and a natural birth. Little Sesame was a whopping 8 lb 13 oz and we named her Sairshe (it's pronounced like seersha). It's a Gaelic name (we changed the spelling a little) that means freedom. Here's a picture of her when she was 3 weeks old. I can't believe she's 4 months old already! I haven't yet decided how comfortable I am putting pictures of her out in internet-land for everyone to see but you at least get this one!
• I quite my crappy job! It was a glorious day. I even had an exit interview with HR where I got to tell them how terrible their employees are treated. It felt nice. I will have to find another job in a month or so but I'm trying not to think about it yet.
  
• I finally finished my frost flowers and lace shawl/blanket. I really only use it as a blanket. Since I left for the hospital at 2am, I brought it with me. I loved having it wrapped around me while I waited for Sairshe to make her entrance. I also knit a lovely clapotis but I don't have a picture because I left it at a friend's house.
  
• I entered knitting in the state fair! I won 8 1st place ribbons and 5 2nd's. It was awesome!
• Ravelry!! So cool! Okay, at least it seems really cool. Since I've been out of the blogging loop, I only recently was made aware of it so I'm still on the waiting list. Hopefully I'll be a member soon!
  

To catch up on my knitting life, here are some things I knitted for Sairshe before she was born. I've forgotten most of the details now so this it a little bare-bones. This is a little shrug and the pattern is from some Debbie Bliss book and I think it's even knit with Debbie Bliss yarn. Does anyone do that anymore?!
Anouk from Knitty made with some long forgotten cotton. I started it years ago for an acquaintance's baby. Needless to say, I never finished it for her. Good thing I had a girl baby!

• 

This is a blanket knitted with Rowan dk Handknit Cotton. I think the yellow color has been discontinued. I love the ruffly crocheted edging! I'm think I'm mostly impressed that I remembered how to crochet something.

Sesame is . . .

A girl!! I was actually really anxious about finding out baby sesame's gender. It's not that I was hoping for one or the other, but I found that I kind of liked not knowing. Then I realized that when I found out, I could start knitting cute baby boy or baby girl clothes. We're thrilled that sesame is a little girl (for the record, we would be just as thrilled with a little boy) and little girl knits are so cute!
Take this Miss Dashwood hat from knitty. (Even if you're never going to knit this hat, it's worth clicking on the link just to see the adorable baby modeling the hat.) It snowed yesterday so I got to stay home and knit. It was great. I knit this hat out of Knitpicks Main Line. It's 75% cotton, 25% wool. The picot cast on took an eternity but it's so cute that it was totally worth it. The pattern has ear flaps on the hat but since sesame will be born in the spring, I don't think ear flaps will be necessary. I used almost an entire skein and if I'd made the ear flaps, I'd probably have needed to use part of a second. I hope sesame likes it. This is my favorite picture from the ultrasound. Sesame is punching me but I know it's out of love.

A month!

I can't believe it's been a month since I've posted! This is what I've been doing.
Vacationing! We spent Christmas at the beach in L.A. this year. My dad lives 2 blocks from the beach and the weather was a nice change from the freezing Portland temperatures! This photo was taken on Christmas Eve. It was so warm! It's been hard adjusting to Portland again.
All my Christmas gifts were received well. My Aunt Judy loved her scarf and happened to be wearing an outfit that matched it when she opened it! The story is that My Aunt Karen was jealous and wanted one for herself. She was out of town for Christmas so she didn't open her gift from me until a few days later. She was really excited to find this:I'm happy that my aunts liked the scarves! My mom loved her blanket too. I was so glad to finally finish it that I wrapped it up before taking a picture. Sorry.

Now that Christmas is over, I've been knitting for myself. I finally finished my Over-the-Knee Socks, though not by the Christmas deadline I had set for myself. They are so pretty, if I do say so myself! I have also started a new sweater for myself. It's a maternity sweater from last summer's IK. I'm using Knitpicks Wool of the Andes and I'm really liking it. The bump in the front is because it has short rows under the bustline to accommodate a baby belly. Here's a modeled picture of the front. I can't believe I'm half done with being pregnant! One good thing about being back from my beach vacation is that I get to go to the doctor tomorrow and see if baby Sesame is a boy or a girl! I'm really excited but a little nervous too. We call the baby Sesame because when I first found out I was pregnant, I read that the baby was as big as a sesame seed and the name stuck. It's a lot bigger than a sesame seed now but my family is starting to think that maybe the baby should actually be named Sesame!

I need to say a great big THANK YOU to my secret pal! She got me a ball winder!! I have already used and I love, love, love it. I don't know how I went this long without one!

Answers

Hi readers. The 2 questions I got about my last post were: Where did you get the elephant buttons? and Who is the lucky baby that gets the sweater?

I got the buttons at a store here in Portland and I don't remember the brand. Sorry to disappoint those of you who wanted to buy then online. They're probably there somewhere but I don't know where.

The baby is, or will be, MY baby! My lack of knitting and blogging lately is because I have been feeling really sick and tired. I think I went almost a month without knitting because all I could do was sleep or lie on the couch watching stupid tv. I'm starting to feel better now so I'm happier and slightly more productive.

I've been knitting my frost flowers and leaves blanket but it doesn't seem like I'm getting anywhere. It's quite repetitive.I took it off the needles and spread it out so I could see that it really has gotten bigger. It's about 2 1/2 feet square so I still have a ways to go. It was fun to see it all spread out but it took almost an hour to get all those stitches back on the needles!

My other project has been dying yarn with natural plant dyes. I'm taking a class at Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks and it's super fun! I think I'm hooked. The little skeins at the top of the post are tiny mini skeins I dyed at the first class so we could practice. They're tinier than they look in the picture. I could maybe knit one baby bootie out of each one. Any ideas for what to do with them?These are my skeins from the last class. The blue is indigo, the pink is cochineal (actually a bug, not a plant) , the yellow is osage orange and the purple is logwood. I don't remember what the other dyes were. Next week I get to dye the rest of my yarn and I can't wait!