The finish line...

Lots of things are finishing up around here. First and most important to me is the fact that Ragnarson is due a week from today! Yay! Although many an overdue Mom has warned me that that means nothing and he might hang in for several more weeks. He is related to both me and Manimal so the lateness is not so much a possibility as a probability, but seriously, my waist, how I've missed it. It's not just the bending and the backaches, it's the fact that waists actually do a lot of work, like holding up skirts and pants.

If you want to see an embarrassing picture of me with my pregnant ass belly hanging out, you will have to come up with a compelling reason for me to lose what dignity I have and post it on the blog.

I suspect that babies have a sixth sense about whether or not you've finished all their sweaters and booties, so I've been finishing like mad, just in case he is hanging on in there until he's sure there will be plenty of knitwear out here for him. Not that he'll need it since it's been 90+ degrees here on the "outside."

This is the "sue" sweater from Elspeth Lavold's Designer's Choice 6. It is knit out of silky wool, which I fell in love with after knitting the golden harvest hat. It's actually going to be a shop sample for awhile until Ragnarson grows into it, I'm going to teach a "knitting for babies" class, and this is a great, stylish beginner's project. I have every confidence that an absolute beginner could tackle this with good results. We will knit, we will purl, we will make button holes, decrease and pick up stitches.

I also finished the strange brown sweater, I'm hoping it will look better when it's actually on a baby, so I'm not showing it here. It has a shawl collar, which persists in curling oddly in spite of the fact that I tried no fewer than 4 different bind off techniques...ah well. Babies are cute, so they can wear sort of wonky sweaters right?

And Manimal's socks are done just in time for the Woven Art, Hand-dyed, Hand-knit show...but like I said it's been 90 degrees out so he won't want to wear them for a month or so at least right?

You can't tell from this picture, but they actually have a really nice depth of color. Come by the shop next weekend and check out lots of customer projects that have been knit out of Nancy's yarn. You can also peek at my weaving which has almost passed the half-way point. My unreachable goal is to have it off the loom before the baby comes, so that Nancy's not stuck with a half woven blanket for a month or so while I adjust to being a mommy...yes yes, I hear the collective cackle. Thanks.

And I finally finished the last 6 inches of I-cord on the Intarsia pillow. It was an interesting experiment in deciding that something should work and then making it happen. I wanted a "piping" effect around the edge of the pillow so I combined a three needle bind-off with an i-cord bind off and I think it worked pretty well.

We have been practicing our new parent skills on this stuffed gorilla. We call him Monkey baby, and here he is modeling my first attempt at knitting a "soaker." For those not in the know, a soaker is a diaper cover which crunchy cloth diapering mom's everywhere assure me are "the bomb" as far as diapering accessories go. When you treat the wool with Lanolin it becomes moisture resistant, I hesitate to say "proof" because there really is no such thing with babies is there?

It's all soakers all the time at my house these days, here's an in progress shot of a pull on variety. This is actually left over yarn from the intarsia pillow. Cute no? I tried to make the skulls sort of friendly and baby like...uhm yeah. My poor baby is probably going to be one of those sensitive poet types, but when he looks back at his baby pictures it's going to be nothing but skulls and flames.

See you all next weekend at the Hand-dyed show! If I'm not in labor that is.

Ragnar...skully diapers baby!