Baby February II - Take 2

This is Take 2 of knitting this sweater.  It started with the BattleStar Galactica game that I was playing.  We earned points over the month for the finished knitting projects that we had.  When I started this sweater, I had a couple of different dye lots of the Malabrigo Worsted in Orchid.  I had started the sweater in the wrong dye lot.  I was so eager to get my points, I figured that I would just finish the sweater and see how much the difference in colors showed.

To the non-knitter it was probably fine, but I was not happy with it.  So I frogged the entire sweater and reknit it in the same dye lot.

I'm so annoyed with myself that I got a little too wrapped up in the BSG game.  Taking longer to finish something properly is always better than getting a project done quickly.  Since having LG, I haven't had a lot of had time to knit.  I was doing less and less with the game and after a month of not reading the forums, I decided to just leave the group.  It's a little liberating.  I should do the same thing with Farmville HA!  

I had to modify the pattern to fit BG.  The collar fits her nicely, but I think the I put too many increases in the yoke.  It flares up a bit more than I would like and the body is a little large.  It was my first time doing major modifications to a pattern.  Something that I have learned takes practice and quite a bit of math.  Even using Elizabeth Zimmerman's equation for making a sweater in any size. Thankfully, kids look good in knits that are a little too big.

BG likes it, looks cute in it and she'll be able to wear it for a very long time.  A couple of years at least.

Home
Sorry if the blog seem boring today.  DH has been home sick for the last two days and has been working from home on the computer all day long.  He went to work today, but I think that I now have something and the headache that comes with it is horrible.  I'm just trying to give you a blog post since it is already half way through the week. 

Baby February I

I was originally going to take pictures of my daughters in their clean white dresses and matching sweaters.  It was going to be so precious it would make you want to throw up.  I believe there is a precious that cute.  However, this never happened. -- The cuteness happens all the time, just not the other thing.

The girls have been wearing their sweaters for a while now, sometimes together.  Normally we are getting dressed up, which means we are going somewhere, which means I'm running late.  No time for pictures then.   At some point you think I would of managed to get them into the backyard to take pictures.  It's really not that hard and I don't know what is wrong with me.  I haven't gotten them to the photo studio together for pictures either.  White dresses and BFSs are planned for those, also. 

I've finally decided that I just need to take some pictures.  LG is taking a nap and BG is at school.  I'm in the backyard taking pictures of yarn.

This is LG's sweater.  It's suppose to be knit on two needles.  That's the actually name of the sweater, Baby Sweater on Two Needles.  I did the yolk carefully following the directions.  Then I started the lace pattern.  After two repeats, I pulled up all the BFSs on Ravelry.  "Yeah, it looks like everyone else did two repeats before starting the sleeves." 

I was pregnant and didn't feel like finding my measuring tape.  Plus, I'm making something for a baby and even Elizabeth Zimmerman, the designer of the sweater, said the gauge doesn't matter because the baby will grow into it.  I figured this also applied when considering sweater length and whatever else.

Pregnant.

The next step of the pattern is to knit the sleeves.  Psshh.  I don't want to be bothering with two knit sleeves getting in the way while I'm knitting the rest of the sweater.  I decided to knit the body first.  Silly Liz.  Or maybe silly me...

Pregnant.

When I returned to the sleeves, the no longer could be knit on two needles because I now had a round hole that they needed to be fit into.  Oh well.  I bought some double pointed needles in the proper size and just knit them in the round.  In the end, I had no seaming. Yay!

I've always said that there is no right way to knit, just a wrong way.  And it ain't wrong unless it looks wrong.  My sweater looks just like everyone else, so I'm cool... and Pregnant!  Well, not anymore, but.. you know what I'm saying.

Now that I finally have buttons for this sweater, LG has been wearing it regularly and looking oh so cute.  The buttons are perfect for this sweater.  I'm so happy that I went back and got them.  I think that we can get lots of use out of it.  Because I choose to make it short sleeves, as she starts to grow more, it becomes a bolero.  Someone already commented on her cute bolero, so I'm going with the flow. 

Pregnant Brain!  It never really goes away.

Cruising

I wasn't going to post today, but sometimes when I'm cruising the internet I see things that are so funny I just have to share.  This is a seriously funny photobomb.

Also on the internet, I'm sure you've seen this commercial floating around.


Check out the making of it.  They basically knit the house and then frogged the whole thing as the filmed it.  All that knitting gone.

Pick Me Up

This weekend we were busy bodies.  BG and I send out some Pick Me Up cards.  I have tons of little cards that I pick up from Michaels for a $1 a pack.  Then we write to someone telling them how awesome they are.  BG is hoping to get some replies in the mail.  She just likes getting mail.

 

I bet you wish you were getting this one asking if you want to go to the beach?

Then it was time to get pulled around in the wagon.  There is nothing like getting pulled around in a wagon, especially when you talk Daddy into doing the pulling.  

We did make it to the beach for dinner and a family picture. 

 

MommyGroups
I've been busy with the mommy groups.  I met up twice with the Red Group last week.  The first was a knitting relax and play at my house.  Only one girl could make it.  It was so nice.  She's a beginner and really wants to make something for her little guy due in two weeks.  I got her started on some Saartje's Bootees.  It was so nice to have the one-on-one teaching time.  I'm heading out to her house today to finish up the first bootee, then she's on her own for the second.  Or until I see her again.  We really are hoping to get these done before the baby comes. 

I got to walk the lagoon with the Red Group, also.  We had some new members.  I love meeting the new members and seeing what they are looking for in the group.  So far walks are REALLY popular.  There seems to be some success with parks for the babies that are already here and coffee shops for the babies that aren't.  We've been the only baby with all the pregnant mommies a few times.  Boy am I glad that I have a great birthing story --here the word great meaning "not scary" or "encouraging"-- to tell.

Button Finds

I realized that I never shared with you my button finds from when I went shopping.

It all started when I just had to have these little purple buttons.  They look pink, but if you put them next to the pink buttons, you would see that they are actually the purple buttons.  The purpley, pink buttons.  Then I picked up some green buttons.  One day I might decide to make myself a Lady February.  It's going to have to be a green sweater.

These buttons are so pretty but there wasn't much variety.  You could choose pink, purple or green in small, medium and large.  The purple buttons are actually three small and three medium.  Can you see the difference?  The pink and the purple very were similar, also.  Then there were giant green buttons.  

BG decided at the shop that she was going to start a button collection.  She started with the $1 a dozen jar.

There are six of each of these buttons.  She spent a good amount of time sorting through the buttons and choosing the ones that she liked.  Then I went through and put away all the colors that I didn't think would ever get used in my knitting.  Because it's really a collection of buttons that I may use one day.  The little red buttons have already been assigned to their knit, but we went in looking for little red buttons, also. 

BG did pick out on special, more expensive button.  It was just too pretty to leave in the shop.

Lots of buttons have since been added to the collection.  I found all the extra buttons that came with any nice shirt I have ever bought.  A few fun shaped buttons from scrapbooking kits have been added.  We found a neat metal button while on one of our walks that is still sitting in the bottom of the stroller waiting to be cleaned and added to the collection.

It all started with those pretty purple buttons.  The buttons that I should of just bought when I first saw them.  Even if I never used them, it would of been cheaper than the gas spent on driving up to Orange County to buy them.  Of course, the day with our friends was well worth the trip. 

Knitting
I'm three balls into the eight balls of yarn needed for the baby blanket.  Ready for a little break.   Just keep knitting, knitting, knitting.

Have you ever seen this site?  It's called Petite Purls.  It's like Knitty.com but with kid patterns only.  I really want to make a Haltermelon.  That would require buying yarn and I am trying to stash down.  No more babies are allowed to be born into my family so that I can focus on knitting for my own kids instead. 

I have got to get my stash down.  Not because it's huge.  It's actually quite small compared to others.  I just feel so guilty for not knitting what the yarn was bought for yet.  But more on that in another post.

Maybe It's NOT Me?

I've been having a ton of fun lately.  Hanging out with the Blue Group, with the Red Group, at the library.  Most importantly, talking to the other moms.  Some of them read my blog or I bring it up.  Turns out...

There are only a couple of librarians that anyone likes.  I've been learning a few librarian jokes, but none of them are as good as my blond cheerleader jokes.  Or the one about Herbert and Gerbert. 

The Blue Group has rubbed other experienced moms the wrong way, also.  They also agree with me on the clique thing.  I'm not going to give up.  I like the activities and there are some other great moms that I have met.  A couple of us are planning little events that fit into our schedules so that we know we will see each other when we meet up.  I'm making friends.

If you remember, the Red Group made me an Asst. Organizer.  I've been having fun listing little events.  My goal is to have a couple of days with regular, repeating events.  Then I add some crazy family stuff on the weekends.  Our babies may not be old enough to get the full effect of them yet, but it teaches us about the events that are in our community.

I've been talking to the moms to see what others want from this group.  I talk to the Red Group moms, the Blue Group moms,  my BFFs (and moms) in Idaho and LA.  Learning what moms hope for and what makes them comfortable when they are trying to find new friends.  Also the things that make them uncomfortable and not want to come back. 

On the same subject, I've had my first big bummer with the Red Group.  I am having the other organizers over to my house today.  Out of the five of us, one girl is going to be out of state for a family event.  Now the Red Leader is sick.  Darn you influenza, darn you to heck.  I was really looking forward to getting together with her because in the end, it's her group.  I have a lot of ideas, but I want to keep within her goals for the group and don't want to step on her toes. I have a lot of ideas that I have collected from various moms and I want to share with her the things that are most popular.  But it some work and would change the dynamics of the group a little bit. 

ETA: just got a message that one more girl is sick.  That makes it just two of us.  So, we decided to have fun with our Saturday and reschedule this for another time.  Stinky poo.

Knitting
I've got until mid April-ish to finish my next project.  It's a second Comfy Blanket for my unborn niece.  It's coming along so far, but is going to be the only thing I am working on for a while.

Just keep knitting, knitting, knitting.

It's Like a Zoo Out There...

Zoo vs. Backyard

I told you that sometimes, while trying to go to the zoo, we end up laying on a blanket in the backyard.  The kids don't mind as long as we make our way to the hot tub later.  But our backyard is kinda like a zoo back there.  Take the other day, I saw a lion, a macaw, a red-eyed tree frog, a warthog and a meerkat.  Okay, the meerkat is really a rabbit.

These are some cute little puppets that BG made over the weekend.  They are a Martha Stewart kit and everything is peel and stick, so no glue or scissors.  They are definitely for kids, I can barely fit my hand inside.  We've been having a lot of fun putting on puppet shows for LG.  It's very National Geographic, ie. the bird keeps trying to eat the frog.   It's a pretty big frog for such a little bird.

We do occasionally get live animals in our backyard.  This is one of four cats that I've seen.  This black kitty and a white kitty hang around the most.  The neighbor that owned them moved away last month.  Suddenly all the little gifts I was finding in the backyard disappeared.  We haven't seen any of the other cats for a while either.

Kidlets
There is one other breed of wild animal that I have seen in my backyard.  Look at her.  So sweet and cute.  Pretty long hair and sweet little smile.

She just got her hair cut.  I let her pick the style and everything.  Now she's all sassy and chic. 

This is a very popular hair style with the girls at school.  My kid is so cool.  She even told me the other day that a boy has a crush on her.  But she doesn't like him because he's weird.  I told her that she still has to be nice to him, and is not allowed to tease him for being the oddball in class.  She's a good girl.

Baby Uggs

Long, long ago, two Thursdays, we were walking to school and it was cold.  Not freezing, but the little nip that chilled you to the bone if the wind caught you wrong.  I looked at LG's feet and thought that she needed a little something more than socks over her footsies to keep her warm.  When I came home I dug through my stash and pulled out my organic cottons.  You remember that, right?

I was so excited to cast on little bootees for her.  I knit one bootee, making the 9-12mth size, the pattern comes in 0-6mths and 9-12mths.  I didn't gauge because I think that with a baby knit, if it's too big they will grow into it.  It was way big.  My gauge was a little large, but I think the pattern just knits big because other people on Ravelry said that they had to go down needle sizes.  Normally I would just finish them and let her grow into the size, but I want them to fit her right now!

So I frogged a finished bootee and started over.

Then I lost all of my motivation.  Then next morning while we were walking to school, we were striping the layers of scarves and sweaters that we were wearing.  It was really warm for the next week.  

I knew I had to finish these, but it's so hard to knit for cold weather in warm weather, and I was just being lazy.  With May Gray so far away, I have all the time in the world.  I kicked my lazy butt and finished them up and the next day it was freezing again in the morning on our way to school.  She's gotten a ton of compliments on them also. :)

I looked up 'bootie' and learned that it can be a variant for both bootee and booty.  So, I'm going with the double 'e' from now on.  I don't want to think about butts while I'm knitting.  

The Librarian

I think I'm pissin off the librarian.   But I'm probably over thinking myself as usual.

Last week at BG's book club, I got in trouble.  I was recording her minutes read on a calendar that I had printed out and not the sheet that she passed out.  I'm just doing it the way that is easier for me because I figured all she wants in the minutes, right?  Wrong.  She wants the sheet with all the titles that BG reads so that she doesn't repeat titles when she read a book.  She was strongly opinionated about this and I walked away thinking I made her mad. 

Really?  There are like, twenty plus kids in the class.  You can't possibly think that you are never going to read a title they haven't ever heard.  Stay away from Junie B Jones, we've read all those.  But it's what she wants.  It doesn't make sense to me and my kid doesn't care if she hears a story twice.  She just wants to go for the storytime and to play with her school buddies.

I am now writing the titles and just scribbling the minutes from her chapter books, school reading, and magazine browsing, reading picture books to LG, all together as one number for the week.

Then today, at the Lapsit Read for LG, I was three minutes late.  Class had started and the only seat open was right next to the librarian on the other side of the circle.   Oops.  Then I sat down and realized that LG had kicked off one of her Uggs.  Oops, oops.  But I couldn't risk my just knit bootee not getting turned into the lost and found or worst, getting ran over by a car.

I had to walk across the circle a total of three times.

She's probably thinking, "I hate that mom."

Then... yes there is more,

...she changed the forms for the big kid reading group, which makes more sense now, and BG didn't pick one up.  So, I had to bug her again to get one.

I don't think that I am really making her mad, I'm just another one of Those Moms. 

Ravelympics Fail

Ravelympics fail, blogging fail, fold the laundry fail, go to the grocery store fail - I really need to do that one today.

Lately I've had a few fails, but not in go for a walk, the sit on the floor, blanket in the yard and play with LG department. Or the play outside, bake cookies, be cuddly with BG department. I am even doing okay in the keeping the house generally clean.

I had a fail in the Ravelympic department on two counts. First the Wallis.  Here is my start picture.

I'm knitting all three pieces at the same time because I am making some major modifications to the waist of the sweater.  Here I had done all the increases for the back, but not the two fronts.  There were a bunch of safety  pins at each increase, but really I forgot what exactly I was doing and I didn't want to reverse figure out the math.  I know I have notes around here somewhere.  So, I frogged the back to the fancy ribbing you see there.

I got all three pieces back on needles and did all the increases on all three pieces.  Now I just need to knit until I decrease for the arm holes.  The only modification here with be in the length, because I have a long torso.  But the rest of the pattern is as written.  So if I don't pick it up again for a while, there will be no frogging.  Here is the current state of the Wallis.

The back is shorter than what I started with, but the two fronts have a lot more finished on them.  I may still one day finish this.  Hopefully sooner than not since I am trying to rid myself of all my WIPs before starting too many new projects.  This is a great system considering I have already started a new project that should of taken two days but you can now add a week to that. 

I still haven't finished my quickie, inspired, cotton knit.  It's so easy.  I don't want to share it until I'm done because they will be so gosh darn cute when I am done.

That's the problem with starting something spur of the moment and then it takes longer than you thought it would.  It's like getting up on a Saturday morning and saying. "Hey, let's go to the zoo!"  But it takes a good 45 minutes just to get ready for the zoo... after showering and making yourself look fabulous.  When you've got about another 15 minutes before you can hit the road, you decide, "Hey, let's sit on a blanket in the backyard and pretend that we are at the park instead."

See... backyard, blanket..
I see a giraffe, a zebra and a tiger.  This is just like going to the zoo.

"I feel cheated" Chicklet @ 7mths

Maybe It's Me?

I don't mean to give the Blue Mommy Group a bad rap.  They are a very nice bunch of moms.  I began to think about fitting into the group the other day when I went walking with them.  We were a very large group and there were some moms that I had never met before.  The early chit chatting was very nice with the unknown moms.  Then our walk started.  Part of it was on surface streets, so we were single-file on the sidewalk.  And I positioned myself right behind one of the clique girls.  We had fun talking.  Then when we were able to spread out some of the other clique girls joined us.  I think that it may be me, not them.  I feel so high school, only no drama. 

I did chit chat with another mom for part of the walk.  She looked familiar, but in the mommy groups I can't remember where I met which one.  Turns out she goes to the Lapsit Storytime at the library that I go to.  I swear LG still loves this the best, but it's only 20 minutes once a week.

I guess what I am saying that I don't want you to think that the Blue Group is horrible and I should stop hanging out with them.  I think that we just got off on the wrong foot with the "new" mom rule. 

Kidlets
It's official, LG is teething.  I know this by the tooth in her mouth.  Let's see if we can get a picture if it.

Whew, that was close.  We almost lost the camera.

 Oops, did lose the camera there.

 Chicklet's First Tooth 2-23-10

A little help from the big sister and we got it.  It's that blurry little white thing on her gums.  We are still waiting for the second tooth to appear.  I can see it, it just hasn't cut through the gum yet.  It is taking it's time and as a result LG doesn't want to take a nap.  Yesterday she slept for an hour combined and that included the stroller time going to pick up BG from school.  No rest for the mommy -- or blogging.

LG  is also super squirmy when I am  holding her.  This is so odd to me since she has figured out the death grip every time I try to put her down.