Various

I feel like I've been thinking about blogging for the past week, but I haven't sat down to actually do it. I was barely on my computer all weekend and there hasn't been a good combination of mild temperatures + partial sun + free time for photography of yarn or projects. I also still haven't gotten back to the birthday party pictures. (I had a bunch open in Photoshop ready for editing when my computer froze up and had to be rebooted. :-( I haven't found the energy to go through the pictures again and most need some editing before uploading.)

So here are some random notes to try to free up my mind a little...

1 - Tomorrow is the beginning of the third trimester. Realizing that it was getting close, we bought baby furniture over the weekend. A crib and a double dresser. This makes it even more critical that I clean up my room so we actually have a place for these items.
I think we've realized that the dollhouses in my office need to go into storage for the forseeable future. At some point when we've finished the work on the 3rd floor and basement I can probably have a room that is all my own again...but until that happens or until Heather is old enough to play with the smaller dollhouse, there just isn't a good place for the dollhouses to live in "public".

2 - I'm trying to finish something at work that I really want to get off my plate and that is really mentally taxing to work on. I'm also pretty tired this week. This is not a great combination. I'm trying to use my iPod to help me through. As well as chocolate and coffee.

3 - I'm making good progress on Samus - a few more days and I should have the main body knitting finished. I'm also trying make myself put it down often enough that I can finish the baby knitting I need to do for next month.

4 - I had a great time at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival. I took a crochet class from Robyn Chachula that was great. There were a few times that I felt a little slow since my crochet skills aren't awesome, but she was a great teacher and never made me feel like a slow student. I hope she'll be back in Pittsburgh again soon! Before her class I did my shopping at the Brooks Farm Yarn booth. I knew that I wanted to spend some of my shopping budget there and it seemed easier to do it before I had seen anything else in the market. I bought 3 skeins of Four Play (50% wool, 50% silk) in variegated medium blues. When planning my shopping I realized how little blue there is in my stash other than aqua, so I set out for a sweater's worth of blue.
Sunday, I took a great color class (color wheel, how to group colors, colors in different fibers) from Kate Lemmers. She could not have been more enthusiastic and it was a really fun class. I'm familiar with the color wheel, but she built on the knowledge I already had and expanded beyond the basics in a way that was really helpful. I think some of what I learned will even be useful when I get back to painting someday.
After class I had a lovely brunch with Anna and Lisa. They showed me their lovely purchases and talked about the vendors I had to visit after we ate. After lunch I browsed the rest of the market. I didn't have a ton of time, but I managed to take a look at each booth (I just skimmed the store booths unless they had something unique) and go back to the ones that really spoke to me. I bought yarn from Creatively Dyed Yarn, Highland Alpaca, Shadyside Farm Studio, Puckerbrush Farm and Star Weaver Farm. I was specifically looking for naturally colored alpaca and wool yarns, but I admit I was drawn in by some hand-dyed specimens as well. I also spent quite a bit of time looking at the yarn at Knitting Notions, but I needed to show some restraint somewhere and their website will be the first place I go when I have a little fun money to spend on yarn...whenever that might be.
My final class wasn't really what I expected. It should have been divided by experience level and it wasn't very well planned or organized. I'm not going to go into more detail publicly, but let's just say that I got a lot of knitting done during the 2 hour class... It raises my esteem even higher for some of the other teachers I've taken classes from.

5 - Saturday night I saw "Fiddler on the Roof" with Topol. I forgot how much I really love that show. I got chills during "Tradition" and I just really like the whole thing from beginning to end - the story, the songs, the characters. I laughed. I cried. I added the DVD and CD to my wish list last night!
And also, Topol was amazing. Not only did I think he was even better on stage than in the movie, but reading that he's now 73 just makes his performance that much more impressive. He did the movie in 1971...

6 - In my previous Heather updates I don't think I've talked about her favorite songs. There are lots of them! Sometimes she sings herself, sometimes she *requests* that we sing to her, sometimes she wants us all to sing together and sometimes she wants to see the YouTube videos of her favorite songs and we are instructed *not* to sing along. :-)
"Happy Birthday to You" has been a favorite for a few months now. We are instructed to sing to her, or a stuffed friend, or a person we recently sang to (Angelina, Andy, mommy, etc). Other current songs:
- The Wheels on the Bus
- The alphabet song (aka "ABCD's")
- Itsy Bitsy Spider
- Jumpin' Josie
- If You're Happy and You Know It
- Baa Baa Black Sheep
- Mary Had a Little Lamb
- Uh-huh
- Go Away
- And she still sometimes requests Jingle Bells... :-)

Random Tuesday

Who knows how long Heather's current nap will last, and I'm way behind on my picture posting, so just a list of thoughts for today.

1 - Two more days left of maternity leave. I go back to work on Friday. At the moment, the thing I'm least looking forward to is setting my alarm and being woken up by it. Heather has been sleeping in a little later lately, so it's pretty likely that the alarm will wake me up and not her.

2 - I'm not too worried about the transition to work otherwise. Heather will be staying home for the first month, so we don't have to worry about getting her out the door for a while. And since the people watching her are unlikely (for the most part) to take her out anywhere, she'll probably fall into a better nap routine than she has with me, which should make it easier for her teachers at daycare.

3 - During my blog hiatus a few weeks ago we went to Dayton to visit family and friends. Heather met her three great-grandparents, two great, great aunts and a great, great uncle. Not to mention two great aunts, a great uncle and a variety of family friends. It was a nice but exhausting weekend. Heather did great in the car and slept well overnight in Dayton. The only tricky part was on Monday after we returned, when she needed to cry for about half an hour before every nap. Poor thing didn't nap enough over the weekend and was exhausted. It was a long day, but we survived.

4 - On the spring cleaning front, I have 7 boxes ready for charity. 5 will be picked up by a neighbor tonight and I'll probably call another charity to take the other 2 tomorrow. I've been through all of my clothes. I'll probably find more when I have more time to organize my room, but I feel at the moment like that is the only part of the house that needs major organization. (There is also an area in the basement that needs organization, but that is primarily R's stuff.)

5 - Lavender Mitts (pattern by Dale of Norway). Yarn is a merino from Artyarns - the leftovers from a sweater that my friend Erin made for Heather.

6 - Pink Clapotis for Breastfeeding in public, and which will be a nice spring/fall scarf when we're done breastfeeding. Made with a cotton/rayon blend by Wool of the Woods.
7 - The famous Log Cabin Blanket - finally photographed. The purple yarn is a cotton that I bought in a cone from Webs several years ago. The pink, blue, aqua and green accents are Cascade Sierra, a 80% cotton/20% wool blend.
8 - Not trying to brag, but I'm pleased to announce that I'm 10 pounds lighter than I was before I got pregnant. I credit breastfeeding with most of this loss, since I certainly having been doing lots of exercising - just a few walks a week with Heather. I also haven't been overeating, but my appetite is finally back, so I do need to keep an eye on my intake, especially with my return to work and more sedentary days.

9 - We're caught up on thank you notes again. The arrival of gifts seems like it has finally slowed to a halt, so I hope to stay caught up until our shower in Dayton this summer. :-)

10 - No progress to report on that sweater for Heather. I've been working on a pair of socks when I've had time to knit. Though I hope to get the sweater seamed up and finished soon...before it gets too warm for Heather to wear it. It felt like summer here today. Lots of sun and temperatures in the mid-80s. Though it is supposed to be in the 60s for the rest of the week, so there is still hope that it will get some use.

11 - I will try to use computer time over the next few days to work on getting more pictures posted in Heather's gallery. Please bear with me!

12 - I'm behind in my blog reading...so the lack of comment on my part is not because I think your posts are boring. ;-)

13 - Ummmm....let's end with something adorable....