Duck!!!

So I have a question. Why don’t businesses have snow days? Because Wed. was just ridiculous. The drive into downtown looked like this:

Yeah. It took us over an hour to drive a commute that usually takes 20 min tops.

Finally the City sent out a memo that basically advised businesses to close… and at around 2:30 my boss sent everyone home.

Anyways! I was so bored on the way into work that I took a few pictures of the sock I’m working on:

It’s that Destination Yarn World Traveler colorway…

Not super thrilled with the way it’s pooling but I didn’t hate it enough to rip out and start over at a different gauge. I really, really like the color combo, though!

The pattern is my own… It’s just a basic pair of guy socks on size 1.5 needles that I started running a P2, K2, P2 down the sides of. I got bored of that pretty quickly and decided to move the ribbing over 1 stitch every 2 rows. It’s forming nifty X’s and I think it will transition nicely to the foot.

In other news we’re in the home stretch with this pregnancy thing…. And like the books said would happen a lot of my first trimester symptoms have come back. Especially the Tired. Oh the Tired. But it’s a different kindof tired… the best way I can explain it is that before my brain was tired and now my body is tired. If that even makes any sense. The nausea is here too but not nearly as bad as in the beginning – and (knock on a giant block of wood) there has been no puking. Heartburn so bad I feel it all the way up to the back of my eyeballs – but no puking.

Also according to one book Gizmo is now the size of a full grown duck:

Which is awesome.

33 weeks pregnant.

Also awesome? The boxes in the background are because we are finally getting the nursery together! Yay for shower gifts!

And I have to say that even with the return of the first trimester symptoms the third trimester is much funner than the early bit of this pregnancy was. For three reasons:

1. The end is in sight.
2. It is obvious that I’m pregnant now. So if I have a wave of nausea at work or if I’m not exactly my productive self one day people understand and don’t just think I’m a slacker. I was so worried about that in the beginning!
3. This is the big one: I can feel the baby moving all the time. It’s a constant reminder that no matter how bad any of it gets it’s so very, very, very worth it.

And because it’s Friday and I love me some random on Fridays… check out this graph my friend Sarah sent me:

It’s true! It’s true!

And whatever Slate says…
How many babies can fit inside one woman?
THIS pregnant lady can only fit one baby.

Also the twitter experiment is going swimmingly so far. If you want to follow me I’m Sourire11.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Can twitter solve my fears about maternity leave?

Ok this is just a scatterbrained list of random but at least I have some belly updates in here and that’s fun.

1.) I am still waiting to blog the shower because people have still not sent me pictures. **Impatiently tapping foot** I uploaded all of mine to this set on flickr, though.

2.) This month – month 7 - Gizmo has been the size of a squash:


Not super descriptive. But it looks a little something like this... 29 Weeks Pregnant:

Look I still have only one chin!

And then I missed 2 weeks because I was super crazy busy getting ready for to have lots of people staying with us. So that brings us to 32 weeks pregnant:

Not so much with the single chin anymore. Also perhaps I should not take these pictures first thing in the morning before I have makeup on. Or am awake. Gah!

Not like there’s anything I can do about it, though. I’m right on track with my weight gain as horrifying as that seems. My 32 week appointment was yesterday and really everything is looking good. Except for the multiple chins.

3.) The baby is now jamming so much that the belly movements are visible from across the room. Also are starting to literally hurt. It’s great the kid has bones and all but pointy! Also for some strange reason Dexter seems to like feeling the baby move. So I end up with the dog leaning on the baby and baby kicking dog because the dog is all up in their business.

What. I like my sibling. Makes a great pillow.

4.) I only have 36 days of work left before my due date. So I’m starting to really think about maternity leave and what all that is going to mean. And my biggest fear (other than the no salary thing. That is so scary thinking about it makes me go fetal so we’ll table that issue for now) is the lack of adult human contact. I’m pretty sure if I have to rely on Matt as my only vein into the real world it will drive us both COMPLETELY INSANE. I need ma peoples! So my friends and I are experimenting with Twitter. I’ve generally been anti-twitter because it seems too much like brain vomit. What I like about blogs is that they are edited stories and not just drivel. The whole “noone cares what you ate for lunch” theory. But I’m guessing that for at least a little while after the baby is born all I’m going to be capable of is unedited brain vomit. And Twitter seems to be the place for quick little updates as opposed to well thought out blog entries. Plus I can do that all from a cell phone and not have to be chained to a computer – which will be nice when I’m wrangling a newborn. So yeah…we’ll see how it goes.

5.) Michele sent this picture from back in the day:

Top row: Jason, Heather, Nancy, Shayne (Michele’s husband) Bottom Row: Matt (my husband), Me, Dan.

It was taken winter break our freshman year of college – so over 10 years ago. What happened was that we all met in Cleveland and went to the Rock Hall and then it started SNOWING. So my parents’ suggested that instead of people driving all the way home to places like Pennsylvania and Canton perhaps they should stay the night – and rent the Shining since it was appropriate. I had never seen the movie before and it scared the crap out of me. Goodtimes.

6.) It’s that time of year again. Ski superpipe is tonight and those bad boys are the craziest of them all. I can’t wait!

Wow

Our baby shower was this past weekend and I’m still recovering. So much love. So many wonderful and supportive people in our lives. We are fortunate enough to literally have the Best Friends Ever. But I have lots of details of all of that coming once people send me pictures (HINT)… in the meantime here are a few photos that Jason sent me from the National Mall this morning:

Between the amazing that is this day, the wonderful weekend we had, and the fact that the Steelers are in the super bowl (I don't really care but Matt very much does)...just wow. So many reasons to be happy!

The Final Countdown

Gizmo is due is exactly 2 months from today.

Which on one hand…

2 months! Oh Yay! We’re finally going to meet this little person we created and we finally get to see what they look like and what their personality is like and get to actually know what body part that is instead of just playing the “I think that might have been a foot” game and I don’t have to be pregnant anymore and we finally get to be parents and I. Am. So. EXCITED!

But on the other hand…

2 months?! Oh Shit! We have so much to do… the birthing class hasn’t even started yet and the baby’s room isn’t anywhere near done and we’re actually going to be parents and in charge of an entire other human being and we can’t even make sure that Dexter takes his medication every day not to mention that stupid dog just cost us $80 because of a “skin condition” and how are we going to afford things like that when I’m not working full-time and I. Am. So. TERRIFIED!

I’m guessing this is a normal response.

So since I know a lot of people who read this are parents what do you guys suggest for the final countdown? Anything that absolutely should be on our to-do list? I mean we have a list of the obvious things – set up nursery, wash baby clothes, assemble all of the plastic goods, get changing table ready, buy diapers/nursing tops/wipes, etc… but what else am I missing?

And just so this post isn’t completely about the baby I’m happy to report that the Arrested Development Movie is finally happening. In honor of that – and of our final countdown – how about a magic... I mean illusion... courtesy of GOB?

Buried in snow and knitting.

So we got buried this weekend. Which I totally used as an excuse not to leave the house from Friday until Monday. All we did was clean and knit/play video games. Matt didn’t even attempt to dig us out until late Sat night. Here’s what our backyard looked like on Sunday afternoon:

And a few more pics for my grandpa in Florida who every day compares notes by the pool about the weather back home:


And another shot from this morning:

When it was snowing, again. But you know what? I liked the weather induced downtime. It’s nice to be snowed in once in awhile – social life be damned. Our house is shiny, another big closet is cleared out to make room for Gizmo, and I finished a whole pile of projects that I’ve been meaning to get to. That is an awesome weekend.

So on to the knitting – I had two pairs of socks that were knit except for 1 foot and 1 toe. Seriously. ADD much? But when I went back to finish them up I discovered that with both pairs the finished sock didn’t fit. Both were too short. Which means one of 2 things:

1.) I was impatient knitting the first one and started the toe too early – and made that same mistake twice in a row.
2.) My feet have grown during pregnancy

I’m going to assume it’s option 1 because the alternative is horrifying. Regardless with both pairs I ripped out the toe of the finished sock, added some length, and tried again. By the end of the weekend I had two pairs of new socks!

The first pair is in Destination Yarn Paris Day – here’s where I introduced and explained the colorway.

The sock is just a plain old sock knit over 54 stitches on size 2 needles with a short row heel to preserve the stripy goodness.

The second pair is my Orsund Bay Test Socks and was my test skein for the Copenhagen colorway. Here’s where I introduced that one.

With this pair I dyed one half of the skein on way and the other half another way just to see what would happen:


Fun with pooling and flashing! The pattern I used for the test knit was the Dublin Bay Sock.. Simple design but still pretty. I love the eye of the partridge heel:

Finishing up those two pairs means that I currently have no socks going. Which makes me a little crazy because what do I knit on the bus? So I pulled out every skein of sock yarn that I owned:

Enough yarn to knit about 12 pairs of socks. I maybe don’t need to buy any more sock yarn for awhile.

But I’m really torn. For awhile these two were front runners:

The one on the left is Dream in Color Smooshy and would be used to knit something along the lines of the Earl Gray Socks for Matt… and the one on the right is Austermann Step and would be used to knit a pair of plain old striped socks for me.

But then I remembered this:

It’s a skein of Destination Yarn in a colorway that I have yet to release. I’m calling it “World Traveler” because it’s dyed from leftovers of other colorways:

I did a couple of different “World Traveler” batches and someday (hopefully soon along with a batch of Copenhagen) I will list it all… but for now I’m kindof tempted to use it for myself.

So what do you guys think? Which socks should I start next?

Decisions, decisions…

The Christmas knitting.

So this year for Christmas I knit a shitload of slippers:

unfelted


felted

4 pairs in all.

One for my brother,


one for his girlfriend,


one for Matt’s brother,


and one for his girlfriend.

All of the yarn is stash yarn. It’s a combo of cascade 220, patons classic merino (some of it handdyed with kool-aid), and random wool from my grandma. I made the sets kindof matching – so the boy’s version was gray and a color while the girl’s version was greens with that color.

Andy/Carolyn:


Joel/Ellen:

So they go together without being too cutesy.

The pattern is from the book “Knit One Felt Too” which is a book I “borrowed” from my grandma several years ago. It’s a great pattern but mind numbing when repeated this much. I know they are appreciated which made the repetition and feeling that I would be knitting slippers for-ev-er worth it.

And that's about all I've got on that.

Oh yeah and I knit 2 hats, too. One for my brother:

Which is the exact same hat I knit for him back in 2005. He has worn the ‘05 version completely out. It’s a mess – all pilled and bad looking. So I wanted to replace it – but guys tend to be creatures of habit. I didn’t want to mess with a good thing so even the stripe pattern is exactly the same. However, this time I used some very soft Alpaca and Lamb’s Pride Bulky which made for a much nicer hat. I knit a reverse version for my dad but it was gifted before I could even photograph it.

That was it for this year’s handmade gifts… and although we did a reduced Christmas in every way possible I was glad that I was able to at least make what I did. There’s nothing quite as special as receiving some thing someone made just for you.

Durrow aka The Brit Killing Sweater

Matt’s sweater is finally done.

I cast on for this in December of 2006.

The combo of the crazy detailed cables on the sleeves:

And completely reworking the construction to be a saddle shoulder sweater based on Matt’s measurements instead of the raglan stock sizes that came with the pattern:

Meant that there is an insane amount of work in this sweater. More than any other project I’ve ever knit.

The yarn is Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed – it is a cashmere/merino/silk blend and is absolutely the most delicious and luxurious yarn I’ve ever worked with.

So between the expensive yarn and the guy there was a lot of pressure for this to be the Best Sweater Ever. I didn’t want Matt to be stuck with a sweater that didn’t fit – or worse be stuck wearing a sweater that looked homemade and shoddy just to make me feel good.

Plus - He’s a designer. Knitter or no more than anyone else he would notice the details and if they were well executed or not. I understand that perspective all too well.

This sweater had to be perfect.

So it sat in pieces – I think fear of failure more than anything else kept me from finishing it. After all of that work it would have been crushing if it wasn’t beyond amazing and that’s a pretty high standard to live up to.

But this Christmas I wanted to do something extra special for Matt. Because, really? Having a spouse who was sick for months had to be no fun at all. But he’s taken incredibly good care of me and Gizmo without complaint.

And Dexter, too!


So I finished it. And you know what? I shouldn’t have been worried. It’s a fabulous sweater that fits him perfectly. All of the work I did redesigning it completely paid off and I’m not sure it would be possible to make something crappy with this wonderful yarn.

He totally deserves this sweater and all of the work that went into it.

Totally.

Ravelry link: Brit Killing Sweater
Pattern: Durrow from the now defunct MagKnits - available on Ravelry here.
Yarn: Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed
Modifications: The only thing I kept from the original pattern was the cable and the ribs. I used the Knitters Handy Book of Sweater Patterns to rework all of the construction and sizing so that the sweater has saddle shoulders and is sized to Matt. It was a giant pain in the butt but worth it in the end.
Verdict: SUCCESS!