Hmmmm...

I keep thinking of snippets of things that I could post, but nothing really seems to be worthy of a whole post. I need to get over that and write what I'm thinking, even if it is only a few sentences. (I should probably realize that being brief isn't a problem...)

Highlights from the last 10 days:

1 - Heather's favorite phrase is absolutely "by myself". She would do EVERYTHING by herself if she could and we usually give her a chance to try whenever time allows. She can (generally) put on her coat, put on her shoes, get out a bib and put it on, eat a banana or orange and climb onto the coffee table. 8-|

Most of these efforts usually involve a little assistance (starting the banana peel, starting the zipper, etc) and some are not ideal activities, but life with a two-year old seems to involve finding the right balance between letting her have some freedom (walking on the inside of the sidewalk without holding our hand) and providing boundaries (not letting her walk on the curb along the street). No doubt it is entertaining and exhausting, especially when you're 7 months pregnant.

2 - Some actual, visible progress has been achieved on my office. The closet is as empty as its going to get, some shelves are empty, one doll house has vacated the room and there is less stuff. A whole trash bag has been filled, as well as a number of recycling bags and a box for donation. The beginning of Saturday was spent cleaning our room and dressing room, since I knew some of my stuff was headed for those rooms and they both really needed a good cleaning. My office/the baby's room will need a really good cleaning when the organizing process is done, but for now I'm just cleaning things as I encounter them or remove them to other parts of the house. I don't see much point in trying to dust and mop the whole room when there is still "stuff" sitting all over.

If anyone has any great tips for storing a fabric stash, displaying old toys, washing musty doll clothes or otherwise dealing with "stuff" from the past I'm all ears. I think I'm doing well at letting go of a lot and "giving up" on projects that haven't gotten done in 5 years of having the materials, but I'm too sentimental to chuck it all. :-)

3 - Knitting update:

Heather's sweater is done. I found great buttons and it washed beautifully. I think it could have been a little longer, considering how much extra width there is, but it definitely has a lot of room to grow for the fall. She wore it all day Saturday without complaint and remembered that mommy made it all but one time. (I admit, it can be hard to remember which sweater's were made by mommy and which ones were made by nana...even daddy forgets. ;-)

On a whim, I made a granny square on Wednesday night. A ravelry friend had a few really pretty crocheted squares in her favorites, and the patterns were free, and I have leftover yarn from Samus. So I made one while we watched LOST and some other TV. I'm pondering a baby blanket, although the wool for Samus isn't machine washable and the one I made is probably too "open" for a baby blanket. The idea of using the pattern with sock yarn and a smaller hook is stewing in my head. But I really should make my future son a coming home hat first since Heather had one of those. It's only fair!

The cardigan and vest I mentioned in my last post are both progressing. I've finished the back of the cardigan and 2/3rds of the left front. I have to wind more yarn before I can continue. I've started the waist decreases on the vest. It is 200ish stitches around, so I only get about an inch or so knit in a day of bus commuting. Even though it will require more finishing later, the cardigan feels faster since I can finish whole pieces in a few days.

4 - I'll be 32 weeks pregnant on Wednesday.

Seriously?!?! I guess we're in okay shape. There are some things that we still need, but if push came to shove buying some diapers and setting up the bassinet, pack'n'play and infant car seat are the only things that *have* to be done before baby comes home. The rest are things that we could improvise around or get before too long. Food, diapers, clothes, a car seat and a place to sleep are really the basic necessities.

We did meet with a doula this weekend, and I have vague notions of what I'd like to purchase before the furniture is delivered, but we are so incredibly laid back this time it is a little scary. :-) Oh, and choosing a name would probably be a good idea, too...

5 - Congrats to blogless Jen on the birth of her son William this morning! I suppose his arrival just pushes the rest of us closer to our turn in the queue!

goals not resolutions

I'm not too crazy about the idea of resolutions. I understand that the new year feels like a clean slate and a chance to start fresh. But my best weight loss period started on February 15th one year because that was when I was motivated. So I'm not one to make a list of resolutions on new year's eve. I'd rather start when I'm ready, not because of the date on the calendar.

That said, this time of year does provide a little incentive for some projects because of the days off. Even with travel to see family, I have more consecutive days off than usual. My office is closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day, so I feel like I should take advantage of the time to jump start the organization that our house needs.

Hopefully, all of the presents will have found a home by the time we go to bed tonight. I'm about 60% done, but the dining room table is still half full. All of Heather's new clothes are in the dryer and most of the toys have been unpacked. I just need to distribute them to different rooms and make sure that we have enough bins that everything can be put away when we want to straighten up and not trip over duplos and plastic forks and blocks.

The main task is dealing with my stuff. The general house stuff is in pretty good shape. We aren't always good at putting everything away when we're done with it, and there are some cabinets and drawers that could use a spring cleaning, but the big issue for me is my stuff. The stuff in the dressing room, my clothes and the stuff in my room/office. I need to go through it, toss what I can, store what I don't regularly need and organize the things I want access to. The hope is that my current room could become emptied by half so there is some space for the baby. My space and/or Heather's room will eventually move up to the third floor, but not until the front room is patched up and finished. We're hoping to do that this spring with the help of the grandfathers, but I want to have back-up plans in case the changes to the grandfather's employment status prevents the work from happening. But in the end, we can make a decision on where things go and that room can't be cleaned well until I deal with my stuff. And it has been hard enough to get to it with one child, if I don't deal with it now that room is destined to stay like that for years!

The other goal is to improve the meal planning and grocery shopping process each week. Adding some recipes to my rotation, making time to plan once a week and making some meals in advance to freeze will be added gradually to my existing responsibilities. We aren't eating badly now, but it could be better planned and more interesting.

Well, I'm off to fold some laundry and start dealing with my stuff while Heather naps. :-)

(Once I get access to the picture archive again there will be knitting photos to share of presents and my two main current projects)

Restraint

At lunchtime, I needed a little distraction and a little time on my feet, so I wandered around the yarn shop across the street for a little while.

The advantages of having a shop so close to work is that I can pick up a set of needles, some sock yarn, yarn for a small present, etc with little planning. I've even rarely gone there to buy yarn at lunch because I finished my bus project on the way to work.

The disadvantage is that temptation is so close. There are many days that I don't leave the office for lunch (especially in the winter), but when I do it is difficult not to go browse. And I find that I can rarely browse and walk out empty-handed.

But today was an exception. I browsed and I didn't buy. I think this primarily a result of the products the shop carries and not any amazing power on my part. (I was in Jo-ann over the weekend and couldn't resist buying two skeins of kitchen cotton that I will use for baby stuff but don't immediately need. Even less so now that I have a car to drive and don't have to stock up on yarn because I don't know when I will next be in a yarn shop...)

Don't get me wrong, the shop has nice yarn. But when it comes to "basics" their options are not extensive. My other primary yarn shop has a large section of wall filled with Cascade 220 and Lamb's Pride in a variety of colors. This shop has a wall of wool in a variety of colors, but there are more brands and thicknesses, and many of them only come in 3-4 colors. This shop also doesn't have any basic cotton - It's all significantly blended (50 cotton, 50 nylon) or mercerized - which isn't great for bibs and washcloths. Lastly, the shop carries a lot more funky yarns than I think a shop of such a small size should have. I've seen a lot of women in there buying novelty yarn and big needles, so I assume it serves them well...I just have no interest in it.

Anyway, the current possible project I'm mulling over is the circle of fun rug from Mason Dixon Knitting. It would be for the baby's room. I really should do so stash diving before I make any purchases to see if I have the beginnings of possible yarn for this project. Partially, I need to find a cost-effective means of obtaining the yarn, and at the same time I'm not really sure what colors from the room I want to pull into the rug. I might need to wait until we have the glider to see what's what.

(For those who know our registry - yes, there is a rug on there. And yes, I would still like to have it. I'm just not assuming that we're actually going to get it. And even if we did, the room is big enough that we could easily use two rugs.)

Painting

I don't think the mural will be totally done by Saturday, as I had hoped, but it will certainly be far enough along that my guests will be able to get the gist. All that is left to do of the first coat is the dark green around the vines. Then all of the medium and dark green needs a second coat and the light needs a bit of touching up where there is pencil showing.

I'm not going to start the bugs and insects until the rest is done. It was just too hard to see where they should go when the letters and vines were drawn in pencil. I also need to look at my acrylic paint stash and see if I need any colors!

I think I'm going to do a light green background for each insect first, so I won't have to work so hard to get them to show up on the dark green background. I'm also still debating about whether I'm going to add any veining on the vines or just leave them solid.

Follow-up

I made last night's post very close to my bedtime...so I was rather hurried trying to get it all up quickly. A few additional notes:

1 - The baby's room obviously isn't done yet. We need to hang pictures and two doors, I plan to do a painting over the crib, the painting materials need to be removed and we need to buy a bookcase. Also, we don't have the glider yet.

Also, note all of the "blue things" in the doorway. Stewart continues to enjoy this room a lot - the wood floor is great for playing soccer with his little plastic toys.

2 - The snowdrop shawl was made with a 95% merino wool, 5% cashmere laceweight that I bought at The Wool Gathering in September. The skein was very tangled in several spots, to the point that I had to cut the yarn twice to avoid spend hours untangling it.

3 - Marcus' blanket was made with a superwash wool from Brown Sheep in Grass Green. I used *every* bit of yarn I had. I had to spit splice a few cuttings on at the end to finish the bind off.

4 - The cabled vest was made with Swish superwash from Knit Picks. The color in real life is less washed out than it looks, but the flash photo made the green look like Marcus' blanket...

5 - The felted slippers were made with Wool of the Andes by Knit Picks.

6 - The three solid colored fetching gloves were made with Andean Silk from Knit Picks. Also, I made a 5th pair for my SIL that didn't get photographed. Those were similar to the blue-purple ones, but made with a rusty orange and black alpaca yarn. The cables were also not as twisted...I move the stitches to left in two moves rather than one.

7 - The corazon mittens were made with Cascade superwash. I'm a big fan of this pattern and there will probably be a pair of these for me in the future.

There are still things I've made for myself that need to be photographed - but I feel so much more "caught up" now!

It's Tuesday (aka I can't think of a good post title)

Not a very exciting weekend to report on, overall, though it wasn't bad. It wasn't as relaxing as I had expected because I had to work on the hours I needed to make up from taking Monday off (I was out of sick days).

Friday night I started sketching on the wall area I plan to paint in the baby's room. Although when the furniture was delivered on Saturday, I discovered that the crib was wider than I had remembered...so my sketch needs some revision before I start painting. I'm now thinking that the painting won't occur until my week off between christmas and new years, because I need to spend the next few weeks getting ready for christmas without running myself ragged.

Saturday, after the furniture delivery, I reluctantly did a few hours of work. Then a friend picked me up for a knitterly meet-up. We met a new knitter at Jo-ann and helped her choose yarn for a log cabin blanket. Normally, I would think this would be too big of a project for someone who's only been knitting 3 weeks...but given her enthusiasm for the project and for knitting, I'm not concerned. She has until June to finish, and her practice knitting went on so long that she literally made three scarves...the woman clearly has stamina.

After yarn purchase, we had dinner, and then settled in at a coffee shop for the log cabin lesson and some knitting. I knitted some more when I got home, so good progress was made on the secret christmas knitting.

On Sunday, R and I went for our usual brunch and both reluctantly attempted the tasks we needed to accomplish. He ran errands. I did a few more hours of work and ran a little laundry. We went to the store and did other obligatory sunday tasks. I didn't get to work on cleaning my office at all and there is some cleaning that needs to be done before company comes this weekend. Not a deep cleaning, but the kitchen floor still hasn't been cleaned since Thanksgiving and the dusty shelves in the dining room were eyeing me while I was trying to work. :-)

Trying to get through the week is difficult when I'm so excited about saturday. I don't know if I'm more excited about seeing my OOT friends, having so many of my friends in one place or getting stuff for the baby! The presence of the nursery furniture is making it all feel more real, but the room is still pretty cold without any "stuff" sitting around (other than paint cans...), so I'm excited about beginning to fill it.