Admittedly boring post

I've got no pictures and this is just a "what I've been up to" post. But I'm excited about my accomplishments, so I'm going to share anyway. Feel free to skim or skip. I promise that the next post will be more fun.

- I'm thrilled that the holiday cards went into the mailbox this morning! It was absolutely fabulous to print the address labels with the computer and I just wish I would have done it all earlier. Starting on Friday after work and finishing on Sunday night at 10:30 meant that I spent almost all of my free moments this weekend doing the cards, and I only wrote a sentence or two on each one. So it wasn't really *that* time consuming, but it was a lot for one weekend.

- I also finished the presents for the daycare teachers. I finished the primary knitting on Friday night and had to wash, block, embroider and photograph this weekend. I gave an extra one of the mug cozies to one of my coworkers in a secret santa exchange on Friday and she was using it this morning, so I expect them to be a hit. :-)

- I wrapped all of the presents that aren't pictures, which basically took the entire length of Heather's nap on Saturday.

- We went to the grocery store, and we have boring dinner food for the next couple of nights, an orange for Heather's stocking, christmas eve dinner food and christmas morning food.

- I did cast on Amelia after I finished the embroidery on the mug cozies. I had to make sure I had something to knit on the bus today and tomorrow! :-) Pictures as soon as I have more than a couple inches of knitting done.

Left to do - print and wrap pictures, assemble Heather's big present, and clean up the house!

Hi

Just a little "yes, I'm here" post. It has been a super busy week at work for multiple reasons, but as of this moment I'm caught up on my hours for this pay period and I have one more day of busy/somewhat stressful work tomorrow (shored up by some work this evening now that Heather is in bed, but it is worth it because I would rather do work tonight than have to do it this weekend). Next week I just have 1 1/2 days of work to do before our christmas lunch on Tuesday afternoon, and none of it should be deadline work, so that's good.

I still haven't gotten to the christmas cards, but since I figured out the label thing I'm not to stressed about that. It's still going to take some time this weekend, but it's manageable. And everything else left to do for christmas feels pretty manageable, too.

Hopefully I'll get caught up on my knitting photography and project posting over the holidays. And we shall see if I'm inspired to finish some works in progress or start new things or both when I get some free time again!

Hope you all have an easy Friday and a lovely weekend!

Quote

I just thought of one of my favorite recent Heather quotes that I left off of yesterday's list. She has said it in the morning while driving to school with her daddy.

"Mommy's on a bus."

:-)
Correct and appropriately timed!

ETA: This mobile text message was screwed up for you the first time by AT&T

A Monday in December

It seems like there is a lot to post and I've got a lot to do today, so I'm just going to leave this window open and add things as I think of them during the day. Maybe I'll be able to cover all of my bases that way. There haven't been a lot of pictures taken lately, so text will have to do.

1 - It was a pretty low key weekend. Heather woke up under the weather on Friday morning. R and I took shifts staying home with her, and she really didn't get back to herself until about half an hour before bedtime on Sunday night. She wasn't totally miserable...just irritable, tired and without much of an appetite. But she was drinking well and she did eat a bit. I think it was most concerning for us because she usually bounces back after a long nap and/or a good night's sleep...which she had on friday, saturday and sunday...but it wasn't until dinnertime on Sunday that she started being her silly self again.
While we were definitely sad to lose out on a weekend with fun Heather, we're happy that she's recovered and didn't get sick for more of the week when we're both very busy at work. (And our fingers are crossed that daycare won't call this afternoon.)
As always happens whenever Heather is sick, my heart really goes out to parents who deal with chronic or regular illnesses in their children. Despite the crud that has been brought home from daycare, in general we've been really lucky and Heather seems to have inherited the relatively strong immune system of her parents. And we're blessed that she is so healthy in general. Knowing the stress that loomed over me all weekend waiting for her to feel better for a relatively minor condition, it's difficult to imagine dealing with that on a regular basis.

2 - I can't even describe to you how incredible it is to hear Heather talk each day. There are still certainly words and phrases that we don't understand, but it seems like there is so much that we do it is just amazing. Maybe if I had a notebook tied around my neck I could record it all, but even then I doubt it. There are lots of times that she will repeat most of a sentence that we've just said (she used to repeat just the last word or two). Some recent examples of sentences she's come up with on her own:

"Nora looking Heather's Christmas (KIH-MAS) tree"
"Money in Heather's piggy bank"
"Come here Stewart"
"Mommy doing?"
"Nana Bapa coming soon" (Nana and Bapa are my parents)
"There is Heather's garbage truck" (replace garbage truck with the noun of your choice)
"Daddy walking snow"

3 - Current favorite activities:

- Watching the garbage truck go by on Monday mornings. If we get up early enough we can see it go in front of the house and in the alley behind.
- Putting money in her piggy bank
- Playing with play-doh
- Using her blocks to make a house for Elmo (he is the only figure special enough for this privilege
- Walking in the snow
- Eating Mac'n'Cheese
- Examining the ornaments and lights on the Christmas tree
- Singing her ABCs, she also likes it when daddy and mommy sing it to her or with her

4 - Christmas
I've purchased everything for Christmas but one secret santa gift and the stamps for the christmas cards. I even bought wrapping paper this weekend and all of Heather's stocking stuffers. We'll be keeping the UPS man and the staff at Mailsmart busy this week as everything I ordered online rolls in. I think we're done decorating, although R might put lights up in one or two more windows. But the trees are decorated, the banister is decorated, the mantle is decorated and I came up with a system for displaying christmas cards that I like better than last year. I'm ready for the christmas bins to leave the dining room. :-)
Trying to print address labels is proving to be a bigger challenge than I anticipated, but I'm going to keep trying to figure it out because it seems like less of a hassle than address 130+ cards by hand. I still have hope that I'll get them mailed by Monday...
I think I'm feeling the same way this year that I felt last year. I'm so excited about Heather's presents that I'm not even really thinking about what I might get. Few family members asked what I wanted, so I suppose I'll be getting things from my amazon list and gift cards. But honestly, that's fine with me. Other than some springy maternity clothes, I really don't feel like I need much. I'm still feeling overwhelmed by the stuff I already have, so I don't want a lot more. :-)
I haven't figured out the timing yet (Christmas Eve or before?), but R and I do need to go through Heather's toys and remove (read: hide on the 3rd floor) some of the stuff that she's getting too old for or that she doesn't play with much anymore. With new stuff coming in, we need to make room in the three primary toy areas.

(ETA - No offense to Open Office, but I took a few minutes to try to make labels in Microsoft Office and I had no trouble figuring it out. So except for the 4-5 addresses that need to be confirmed, my labels are ready to print now - yay!)

5 - Knitting
4 of the 5 teacher gifts are done minus blocking and embroidery, and I think I'm going to make two more for friend gifts since they're so fast and useful...and maybe one for me, too. :-)
The swatch for Amelia is done and washed. I'm debating between size 2 and size 4 needles. Based on the pre-blocking measurements, I'm either getting 24 or 26 stitches to 4 inches...so since I have to do math either way (the pattern is for 20 stitches to 4 inches) I might as well decide which fabric I like better. I think I'm leaning toward the size 2. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm a super loose knitter and I'd rather knit an extra few hundred or thousand stitches and get a sweater I love than be stingy and get a sweater that is just so-so...and I tend to prefer a more structured fabric. But I haven't studied the washed and blocked swatch yet or done any math, so the decision is subject to change. (I probably won't give myself permission to go back to this until the teacher gifts and christmas cards are done...)

6 - Facebook
I've been sucked in. My knitting group decided that we should use facebook to plan our events so that no one has to be saddled with sending out evites and we can chat between events without filling up everyone's email boxes. Plus, people can come and go as they please instead of having one person responsible for keeping the email list.
Pro - I've caught up with some college friends that I've been meaning to be better about communicating with.
Con - It's just one more thing to make my "internet life" more time consuming.
Given these two thoughts, I'm mostly limiting myself to communication. I'm keeping most of my picture posting on flickr, I'm keeping knitting content on ravelry, I'm keeping most of my thoughts and comments here, and I'm just using facebook for chatting with people that I really want to chat with. In other words, I'm not going to friend everyone I've ever met. No offense to anyone, but I have no desire to maximize my friends to the point that it is hard to keep up with the people I really want to read about.

7 - The Muppet Movie
Heather and I watched about half of the movie yesterday after her nap. She seemed to enjoy most of it. She got impatient during the Doc Hopper scenes (can't blame her), she liked the froggys (Kermit and Robin) and she liked it when Fozzie said "Wakka wakka wakka". :-) That scene could have lasted longer in her opinion.
I was also pleased to discover that I still know all the words to "The Rainbow Connection". :-) Not bad considering that it's been almost 10 years since I graduated from college.

Quick Update

I stayed up too late last night, but since I was productive I don't feel as bad about it. Both trees are now decorated with ornaments!

So except for fixing the lights already stranded on the banister (half of them are out now), I am done decorating for christmas - yay! There are still lots of household chores to do, but it feels good to get one checked off the list instead of spending 8-11pm on the computer, and being annoyed with myself for not being productive and for staying up too late.

(Image stolen from R's blog)

I cast on a gauge swatch for Amelia this morning on the bus. Just a quick break between daycare teacher presents. I'm 90% sure that I need to go down a few needle sizes and math is going to be required to substitute this yarn. But I think it will totally be worth it, and it will make for some great holiday car travel knitting!

I think I found it...

I'll have to see how my gauge works out, but I think I finally found the right sweater pattern for the sweater's worth of hand-painted wool and silk yarn that has been marinating in my stash for 3-4 years. It has just enough variegation that I don't think it works well with a lace or cable pattern, but I haven't been able to find a cardigan pattern (until now) with enough interest for me but not too much for the yarn. A pattern that could flatter my curves, be professional enough for work and be something that I really wanted to make. There are simple cardigan patterns out there that would work, but nothing was really making me as excited as I've always been about the yarn.

The best (?) part is that I don't have to wait until after the pregnancy to make and wear it because it only buttons at the chest. If only I could go home and cast on my gauge swatch RIGHT NOW.

Meet my new friend Amelia.

Finishitis and Startitis

Last night I finished the baby/toddler sweater I've been focused on for the past couple of weeks, except for weaving in the ends and giving it a bath. But I can't post a picture yet because mama is a blog reader. I'll try to get a photo up for those of you on ravelry.

I like the feeling of finishing something. And my current focus is on baby hats (however many I can get out of my skein of yarn) for savethechildren.org, which are sure to give me more finishing satisfaction in the next few days.

I'm once again feeling like I simultaneously have startitis and finishitis, so I'm trying to focus on the finishitis to clear the nearly-complete and small holiday knitting projects from my queue, and then I can cast on a bunch of projects for me and Heather, and return to Babette. This is the plan, at least. As I was finishing the fair isle sweater over the last few days, I started picturing one for Heather. So that, and a sweater for me out of whatever yarn strikes me the most when I go stash diving are definitely at the top of the list.

The only true holiday knitting I need to do is a series of gifts for Heather's teachers. I'm going to knit coffee cup cozies for them and embroider Heather's symbol on them. (Sure, it will be another child's symbol next year, but embroidering flowers on them makes more sense than putting her name on them.) I might also include a starbucks card or a few packets of hot cocoa. TBD based on what I can find when I go shopping for the mugs. :-)

If I'm in the mood for some small knitting, I might also start making some tree ornaments and I have a vague notion about a knitted advent calendar and tree skirt (inspired by a friend). But those are only ideas for if and when the mood strikes and not anything I *have* to do this year. I'd also like to do some festive knitted stockings eventually, since we have 6 mantles in our house and only enough stuff to decorate one or two of them.

As usual, what actually gets knitted will depend on the amount of time I have available to plan at the moment when I can start a new project...and how much of Heather's sleeping time I spend doing the chores that I really should be doing instead of knitting!

I've done it

I'm listening to Christmas music today. :-) Not sure yet if it is improving my productivity, but it certainly isn't hurting!

Heather is a fan of the Christmas tree again this year, although she's been similarly enthralled by the ladder, too. Hopefully I'll get to the ornaments soon and we can get that out of the way.

I'm working on my address list now for Christmas cards, so if you don't think we have your current address, you should email it to me asap! I can't wait to get those finished. I don't want another December where they hang over my head all month. Or another trip to see family when I have to bring them with me to finish...

November Recap 2

Children's Museum

The next weekend my parents came to visit, and we decided to take the opportunity to visit the Children's Museum. It was a big hit with all of us. We started upstairs in the waterplay area.

Playing in the water pipe area.

Putting water from the pond into the watermill.
Putting water from the pond into another cup. (Despite her serious look, she was having a great time. She was just concentrating hard!)

Looking for the next toy to play with. She tried out a number of different boats and would have been happy with more sailboats.

When we moved down to the infant/toddler play floor Heather enjoyed the trains.
And she liked watching the fishes like she does at school.


It was a lovely day at the museum capped off by lunch and a quick visit with The Boss' mommy in the art studio where she was teaching knitting.

Meeting Karla

Last weekend, we finally got to do what we've been waiting to do for a long time. We got to have our first playdate and dinner with Karla! The girls were a little wary at first, but after some play time with the parents and a yummy dinner, it was time for some dancing!


And then it was time to play with Play-doh.


Snow

We haven't had a ton of snow yet, but there has been a little here and there. Enough to break our Heather's new winter coat and order her a snowsuit (not pictured) which is a little big but will keep her nice a warm when we go out to play in the snow to burn off toddler energy.

Thanksgiving

This weekend we had a nice Thanksgiving and mini-vacation. After watching some of the Macy's parade, we headed to R's parents' house for Thanksgiving. The house was more full of canines than usual since SIL and BIL both brought their young chihuahuas and SIL brought her terrier, too. The smaller chihuahua crawled on Heather's lap and made her giggle.

Friday we enjoyed a slow morning and Heather took a long nap, so I worked on cleaning up the house. Despite Heather's short nap on Saturday, I manged to get enough done that R could put the tree up that evening.

Today we attended little EJ's first birthday party. It was a lovely fiesta, although it took Heather a little while to understand that those newly unwrapped presents weren't hers. :-)

November Recap 1

I'm taking a break from the pre-decorating house cleaning to recap some of the fun we had this past month. I'm not sure what is making the time get away from me so much, although I have been posting past pictures to flickr and checking out facebook, so maybe that explains it.

Maine Wedding and New England trip

We took our first plane flight with Heather up to Boston and then drove up to Maine for the wedding of a special friend who I've known since kindergarten. Heather loved the plane rides and did really well considering that most of her naps were during long car rides from place to place. (She refused to nap on the plane because it was just too interesting.)

Heather got to wear her Halloween costume to the rehearsal dinner.

The view from our hotel room.


The wedding was lovely. Daddy and mommy chose a seat at the back of the crowd and each took a turn letting Heather stretch her legs. She did well but didn't really understand why we needed to stay seated.

Between the ceremony and the reception, the wedding party went to the beach for group pictures, so our family took the opportunity to walk on the sand. Yes, the sand was cold. But the breeze was mild and the sun was out.

Beautiful shawls made by the bride herself.

The flower girls thought that Heather was adorable. Who can blame them?

Once she finished eating, all Heather wanted to do was dance!



Happy ladies!


The next day we traveled to visit friends in western Massachusetts. We didn't take too many pictures while we were visiting, but we did get one with Keeno the bunny.


Before heading back to Boston to fly home, I got a little over an hour to shop at mecca...

While mommy was shopping, Heather and daddy were browsing at a toy store. Cookie Monster came home with them since fire trucks aren't very cuddly.

Waiting to fly home...
Babies

The following week had two notable occurances. First, R and Heather and I went to my first pre-natal appointment. :-) That's right. Heather will be a big sister in May 2009. We're just at the end of the first trimester, and other than being tired mommy is feeling well.

Also, I went to a baby shower for a friend. She's due in december and I was delighted by how much she liked the baby sweater, bib and washcloth I made for her little one. :-)

Dancing Fools

One of the poor quality cell phone videos I took on saturday of Heather and Karla dancing.

11 minutes

It's kinda sad how long I've been meaning to post and I haven't gotten to it for various reasons - being tired, working on my flickr uploads, finding my missing needles and yarn, labeling Heather's new winter coat, boots and shoes among other things. That, and being overwhelmed about how much I want to post and haven't gotten to.

I really need to go to bed at 10, so when I started I had 11 minutes to write this...and now I have 8. :-)

A few tidbits:
- Anytime Heather sees cheese in any form, she says "Mac'n' cheese?" Macaroni and Cheese used to be called "Cheese", so I guess she's evolved.
- Heather and I went to target tonight and see really seemed to enjoy trying on shoes. I think daddy is worried.
- Heather loves the garbage truck. On monday we were lucky enough to see it twice. Once from the front window and once from the back window. We couldn't do anything until it was out of view. Every truck is now a garbage truck.
- Her current favorite book is a Moose book that she calls the "soose" book. But once we say Moose, she says it with an "M".

two minutes...

As I mentioned earlier, I lost some yarn and needles in the house. I've been looking for it since Saturday and finally found it last night. Progress is finally being made again on the toddler sweater that's been sitting for a while.

Before I found the yarn and needles I got bored on the bus with my socks and started using the sock yarn to make an iPod cozy.

Time up! more soon...

Toddler Ticket

During our many hours in the car while visiting Maine and Massachusetts this weekend we had only an AM/FM radio to listen to (*gasp*) and were forced to listen to many political ads when we tired of scanning the stations for more music.

Our conversations and Heather's responses to the ads convinced us that there would be an ideal ticket to run if a party wanted to attract the toddler vote.

Heather smiles everytime she says "bama" and "nunu". Politically, an Obama/Sununu ticket is probably unthinkable, but it would certainly make for some adorable political ads. (I don't know that it would sway any voters, but it would certainly make members of both parties smile.)

I was hoping to do a long weekend wrap-up tonight, but after doing some catching up and picture proofing, it is already almost 10pm and I'm tired. I will try to get to it soon while everything is fresh in my mind, but it is going to be a busy week at work, so I'm not making any promising.

Thomas, garbage and laundry

There really isn't a lot of exciting stuff to report around here. My current knitting is all secret and the days have mostly been of the getup-work-dinner-tv-bed variety. It is getting too chilly for post-work trips to the playground and it may even be too cold for an afternoon playground trip this weekend - brrrr. Well, it really won't be too cold to go, but it probably will be too cold for Heather's extended swinging sessions. But it might be okay if the sun is out...

Onto the subjects of this post. Thomas, as in Thomas the Tank Engine, is a new Heather favorite. A few weeks ago, she was being restless about watching Sesame Street but she really wanted a "vid-yo", so I decided to try something different. She has liked trains for a while, so we gave Thomas & Friends a try. Not only does she never request that we fast-forward during the train show, she also knew Thomas' name from the first time we watched it. I have to assume that she learned his name at school, because up until R bought the Thomas toothpaste last weekend, there was no evidence of him in our house. (Having Thomas toothpaste has made her excited about brushing her teeth again - we'll take it.)

The other two concepts she's learned recently are garbage and laundry. She knows that discarded items go in the garbage and dirty clothes go in the laundry. The only confusion she has is that sometimes we clean up with disposable wipes and sometimes we clean up with cotton washcloths. So I explain that the wipes go in the garbage and the washcloths go in the laundry.

R and I are both happy that Heather is gated from the garbage can, so she can't make her own decisions about what items are garbage...

Babette Math

The Babette Blanket

A few notes about the Babette blanket. I'm using 10 colors of Cascade 220 that have nothing to do with the 15 colors of DK weight yarn in the original. I didn't want to plan the blanket out, but I wanted a fairly even distribution of color, too.

The blanket is made up of crochet squares in a variety of sizes. Let's call them A, B, C, D, E, and F. They build on each other, so A has 2 rows, B has 4 rows, C has 6 rows, etc. There are 126 squares total.

So to get a somewhat even distribution, I made 12 or 13 size A square in each color to get my 126 total base squares. Then I set aside the 50 squares (5 in each color) that didn't need to get any bigger. (If I was smart I would have started weaving in the ends on these at this point. But I'm not that smart.)

So then I took my 76 squares and assigned them to my ten colors to turn them into B squares. 4 of the colors got added to 7 squares each and 6 of the colors got added to 8 squares each. (4x7=28 and 6x8=48, 28+48=76) I distributed them so that no B square is the same as any other B square. The goal again is a pretty fair distribution of color and somewhat equivalent use of yarn (though that part will fall apart as the squares get bigger).

I have 3 B squares yet to finish. When that is done, I will choose 49 of the B squares to be "finished" and the rest will go on to get bigger. There are 16 C squares, 7 D squares, 2 E squares and 2 F squares. That means I need to make 27 C squares, so each color will be used 2 or 3 times for the next round. Then I'll need 11 D squares, so each color but one will get used once and one color will get used twice.

For the E and F squares, I'm really just going to get to decide which colors I want to finish those off with and probably which color I have the most remaining yardage of. I don't know whether I'll need to buy yarn to finish the squares, but I am 100% sure that I'll need to buy yarn for the border. Color to be determined once I have the squares blocked and sewn together.

I haven't starting attaching any squares yet because I want to lay the whole thing out before I start putting it together. I need to be able to balance the color and try different options.

So happy

I really shouldn't have read my friend's blog about arriving in Guatemala while I was still at work. Looking at the pictures from today almost cause me to start crying at my desk.

Gosh I can't wait to meet that little girl...and I know that doesn't even compare to how her parents feel about finally getting her home.

Rocking

When we left cracker barrel, heather said 'bye bye rocking chairs'. :-)

man...

...there's nothing like losing half a days work 20 minutes before the end of the day.

:-(

(I suppose if I used something like twitter, this is the kind of thing that I would post there. But I have no desire to add yet *another* web thing to my already too busy web life.)

"I keem"

We went out to dinner tonight after an extended session at the playground. We chose a burger place a few doors down from an ice cream shop.

After dinner we loitered outside for a few minutes because they have some raised curbs around the planters that Heather likes to walk on. (She likes to walk on any raised curb, wall, stone, etc - its a highlight of several of our regular neighborhood jaunts.)

I was waiting to see if she was done walking the wall, and R was looking at something on his iPhone, and the next thing we know Heather starts saying "I keem, I keem, I keem" and pointing at the ice cream shop.

Guess we have to be careful where we hang out from now on. ;-)

-------------------------

On an unrelated note, I think it is awesome that The Yarn Harlot coined a new word that is credited in the New York Times. Unsurprisingly proof of her abilities to appeal to a large audience, not just an audience of knitters. I also think it is cool that Mr. Kinnear called her the Michael Jordan of knitters on national TV, but I think it stinks that he assumes that all knitters are female...

Hello

Just stopping into to say hi and expel a few thoughts from my brain:

1 - Next time I make a sweater for myself I need to make sure that I make the shoulders narrower. It is kind of astounding that it took me so many sweaters to figure it out, but something about shoulder width was mentioned on one of the podcasts I listen to, and something in my head finally clicked. I have narrow shoulders. Even store bought sweaters tend to fall off my shoulders. Before, I was thinking that I just need to make the shoulder seams wider, but really it is that the distance from shoulder to shoulder should be smaller. I'm wearing Ivy today, and the shoulder seam is at least 1" past my shoulder bone on both sides.

This doesn't mean that Ivy and my new cardi aren't wearable, but it is a little annoying that the shoulders feel like they want to fall off from time to time, and now I can't wait to fix that issue on my next time out.

2 - Speaking of my new cardigan, it still isn't done. The button band needs to be reknitted and I need to find buttons that aren't as heavy. Babette and gift knitting have been taking precedence at the moment, but I think I'll probably get back to it soon since chilly weather is upon us. The cotton summer bombshell top is on hold indefinitely.

3 - Babette is going well. All of the 126 2-row squares are done and I have about 1/4 of the 76 4-row squares done. I may start blocking the 50 2-row squares that don't get anything added to them this weekend. We'll see.

4 - I'm tired. I traveled for work earlier this week and put extra time in before we left. I went to bed earlier than usual last night, and I feel better today, but I'm still praying that Heather will let us sleep in tomorrow morning.

5 - I'm not finished reading the Mason Dixon knitting book yet, and the Yarn Harlot's book arrived yesterday. It would be so nice if these publishers would space out the releases a little bit! Maybe I can try reading and knitting again and see if it annoys me less.

6 - Heather is going to be sad when it is too cold to go to the playground. We've already had a few evenings that were too chilly, but R and I are hopeful that we can go this weekend. In addition to the swings and slide, she loves climbing on the different levels, crawling through tunnels and asking to do things that are really too big for her. She also likes drinking from the water fountain.






7 - Have I mentioned that I'm going to get to go to Webs next month? I have got to figure out what my strategy is going to be...

8 - It is lovely to have a membership and live near the zoo so you can decide to go on a whim on Saturday morning.



9 - Baby tigers are cute.