Are you sick of posts about the baby yet?

I've noticed a slight change in the types of anecdotes that "old-pro" type mama's tell me now that we've made it past the one year mark. For some reason when you are the mother (or father perhaps? one of you fathers will have to tell me) of a newborn, people tell you stories of the sleepless nights, the endless colic, the spitting up, the getting peed on...like you need to hear that. I think it's the same instinct that causes us to tell birth horror stories to pregnant women, an ingrained type of cultural hazing perhaps.

Now that I am the proud Mama of a rockin' walkin' one year old people look at my superactive, always busy, dirty, flirty little one and tell me some version of this story. (I've heard it three or four times now)

"Some of my favorite times with my baby were after they had been running around all day, and had their bath. They would be all warm and snuggly and I they would smell so good. Then when they went to sleep they would seem so peaceful, like a little angel."

The most important parts of this story are that 1). babies smell good after their bath, and 2). babies look like angels when they are sleeping.

Now I don't know if this story is some construction of memory, but if I was going to tell my version it would go something like this.

"I remember when my baby started walking, he would run around the house like a maniac all day long, spreading all his toys out around the living room, stashing them under the furniture where I would have to get down on my hands and knees to retrieve them, or dropping them over the babygates and then screaming because he couldn't get them. After all the toys had been taken out of the toy box, then he would start to hide our shoes and pull things off of the tables, where I put them so that he wouldn't be able to get at them. In the evening he would get this sort of manic intensity, alternating between hyperactive wriggling and fussy crying, and then I would know that it was time for bed.

I wouldn't want to give him a bath, because I knew that would just get him more cranked up, plus his favorite bathtime game was "swing the washcloth," so both me and the bathroom would be entirely soaked by the time we were done. I didn't really have a choice though, if it was just the fact that he was all dirty I probably could have let it slide, but bathtime was the time that I would check him for new bruises and scrapes and make sure that all of the new injuries were minor enough that we wouldn't have to run to the emergency room.

After the bath he would smell like a wet dog, and I would towel him off and wrestle him into his pajamas. Then I would lay down with him and try to calm him down by reading him a couple of books, although I would have to give him and extra book to chew on, and usually he would get bored with the story and start whacking me with the extra book. Then when we finally laid down he would try to nurse while standing up and getting out of bed at the same time, which was pretty irritating. Eventually he would just pass out, although he would still be twitching in his sleep, rolling around and tangling up his blankets. Sometimes he would even sleep for half an hour before he'd wake up enough that I'd have to come back in and nurse him back to sleep."

Ragnar...of course the son of the Manimal would smell like a wet dog after his bath.

Stealing a riff...Questions I knew the answer to, but asked anyway because I'm just masochistic like that. Part 1 of 22

Blatantly stealing someone else's funny idea is almost as good as coming up with your own right?

In an "imatation is the sincerest form of flattery" type vein, I give you:

Questions I knew the answer to, but asked anyway because I'm just masochistic like that. Part 1 of 22

Asked of Manimal, after returning from having rinsed the baby in the shower in an effort to remove the shit that he had managed to smear all over himself, including up his nose and in his eye:

"Do you want to hold the baby, or scrub shit out of the carpet?"

More fun with bowls....

The "turtle" bowl sculpture...
The "Alien Space Pod", bowl sculpture...
The "Happy Apple Up on Top" bowl sculpture...note Ragnarson's less than thrilled expression? Rat Girl isn't around to interpret for me, but I think we can safely say that he could he talk he would be saying: "Uh...Mom? Are you okay? Because I think you're sort of overdoing it with the bowls, and in case to forgot, those are MY bowls, so, can I like, play with them please?"


Ragnar...stainless steel is my new medium, baaaaybee.

Baby toys?

For those of you who don't have children yet, I'll let you in on a big parenting secret that will save you a lot of money when you take the plunge.

There is no such thing as baby toys.

There are lots of cute hunks of wood, plastic and plush marketed as baby toys of course, but these are really "parent" toys. Things for you to play with while the baby entertains him/herself by eating paint chips, and stale crackers out of the corners where the vacuum won't reach.

There's pretty much only one game at our house these days, and it's called "stack 'em up, knock 'em down." Guess which part of that is my job? Ragnarson is getting pretty quick at the knock 'em down part, so I rarely get more than three things stacked, and he's got quite an arm, so things fly pretty far. Really we should rename it "stack 'em up, knock 'em down, watch Mama crawl under the chair to get the blocks" because I think that's the part he really likes.

We have a set of stacking blocks, sturdy wooden nesting blocks that have been passed down to us through two previous children. Ragnarson is systematically destroying them. I have a "things that need to be glued" pile on the livingroom table, and there is usually at least one of these blocks awaiting repair.

The absolute best stacking "toy" of the moment is a bunch of stainless steel bowls, some that I bought at a garage sale specifically for Ragnarson, and some that used to be our salad bowls, but which are now part of the clangy, bangy pile in the playbox.

Being the frustrated artist that I am, I immediately saw the possiblity for sculpture a'la Brancusi's "Endless Column" and have been sort of obsessed about getting ALL bowls stacked up together...to the point where I caught myself holding Ragnarson at bay with one hand and trying to finish my tower with the other...see what I mean about "parent toys?" I finally managed it by making a secondary pile of things to distract Destructo Boy while I quickly stacked and photographed.Yeah, I am well aware of how pathetic this is.

And Ragnarson: such a critic.
Ragnar...yeah, I need to get out more.

A milestone to be remarked upon.

Hey look, a one year old!

This post is a little late, because, well, because it is. But if it was a week ago, and I was thinking back about what was happening at this time last year (you know, a week ago), I would have been thinking about a crazy 69 hours of my life starting around 11:00 pm on August 13th. 69 hours that included some of the most frightening , painful, exciting, exhilarating things that have ever happened to me. I still haven't written out the "birth story" because at first it was too frustrating and sad (being transferred to the hospital after having hoped for an intervention free "natural" birth), and then when the bad parts started to fade and I was ready to come to terms with it all, well, I had a very energetic, amazing, demanding baby to take care of, and no time to sit down and sort through all my memories and feelings. So...someday I will type it all down, but for now it's enough that I'm starting to remember and treasure the good bits, and let the stressful, irritating bits slide off into the fuzzy part of memory. (Ragnarson, age 2 weeks, with his grandma, what a peanut! I honestly have no memory of what it was like to hold my newborn baby...weird)

It was amazing to feel my body getting ready to push out a little human.

It was good to have a partner there to lean on, in a labor that seemed without end, he was there with me for almost every contraction (except when I sent him out to fetch the then new Harry Potter book on tape...)

It is funny to remember my midwife telling me to have a beer and try to get a little sleep.

(Ragnarson, age two months, gaining wisdom on his Papa's knee)

It is beautiful that after every stressful minute of the hospital experience, that my sister-in-love miraculously appeared at my bedside minutes before her nephew made his world debut (she lives in Seattle, and needless to say isn't normally to hand).
(Age 3 months, meeting his "aunt" Nora (the dog...yes my parents needed a grandchild and not a moment too soon) and his Uncle)
(Age 4 months, the saucer days...that lasted for, oh, five minutes or so)

I was just reading somewhere about how we have a 70% start rate for breastfeeding babies, but that number drops off dramatically around 2 weeks and continues to plumet until by 6 months only 35% of American babies are breastfed. That would certainly have been us if it hadn't been for the postpartum support I got from "the midwives" and the whole community at the birthcenter.
(This is maybe 6 months? My photo organization and labeling gets pretty fuzzy after month 5, which is when the mobility started)

Every baby should come with a 10 year old sister, and that's all that needs to be said about that.

(Month 13)

And it doesn't look like he's going to start wearing clothing anytime soon....

Ragnar...frankly flabbergasted by this walkin' one year old crazy man.

My first meme

Because everyone likes to show off their smartness...consider yourself tagged. I can't not commentate, so you might want to find someone with less opinions than me if you plan to cut and paste this to your blog.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.” (top 100 series of books maybe, by my count there are a lot more than 100 books on this list)
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (bloglines doesn't have an underline, so I'm putting my favs in red...pretty don'tcha think?)
4) Reprint this list on your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (it sort of chaps me that this is number 4, kudos to JK and all, but Harry Potter does not belong anywhere close to Lord of the Rings or To Kill a Mockingbird)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (parts of it, the old testament mostly, and some of the gospels...and of course revelations, I'm a recovering goth girl after all.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (okay, my dad read it out loud to us when we were kids, but that still counts)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (well not the COMPLETE works, but I was neigh apon obsessed with Hamlet in high school, must have read is 6 or 7 times)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks (never even heard of it..yikes)
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (nor this one neither...gonna have to turn in my library card)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (hey...isn't that part of the chronicles of Narnia? What gives?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (does book on tape count?)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (book on tape again)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (book on tape, and I am OFFENDED that this is on this list, especially coming in ahead of One Hundred Years of Solitude, what a craptastic waste of everyone's time)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (book on tape...sigh)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (book on tape)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville and again and again
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (I liked "in a sunburned country" much more)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (does the first page count?)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (I woulda thought this one was covered by the "complete" works, but I guess not...LOVE me some Hamlet)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (except I skipped about 50 pages in the middle...)

47, not even half...but then again much better than 6. And I've actually been meaning to dip into Austen and the Bronte's so ask me again next year.

Ragnar...if listening counts as reading, I'm pretty well read...or heard, or something.

Knitting...in public

Yes that is a giant knitting needle.

That's also Rae of Rae's Yarn Boutique, and my baby.

I think Ragnarson might turn out to be a knitter.

We publicked and we knitted and my team won the contest for knitting on the giant needles...but I couldn't take pictures of that because I was furiously knitting.

I am now obsessed with the giant needles. I want to knit something cabled...and huge.

G is for...

Garden House!! That's Ragnarson, of course, trying to cram as many woodchips in his mouth as he can before I put the camera away and come after him.

Our Governor, the esteemed Jennifer Granholm (she's canadian, eh?) started something called the Cool Cities Initiative. The idea is to make Michigan's cities cooler, so that young people won't relocate out of state, and perhaps some of the people who move here for school will stay once their schooling is done. Sort of a lame name for what is essentially a really cool (heh) program.

So communities write up grant proposals for things that are "cool" and if they meet the cool criteria the government gives them some money. One of those cool things is in a park right by my house.

It's a huge greenhouse full of raised garden beds. Community groups can apply for space, and then they can use the greenhouse to grow veggies. There are even tons of seedlings started so that literally all you have to do is dig a little hole and plunk them into "your" bed.
This is the "moms and toddlers" plot. Currently it's full of collard greens and chinese cabbage, but the cabbage at least is starting to bolt, so I expect it will be pulled out soon. I've been planting a few tomatoes and things every time I get a chance to go. In the upper right corner there is a foot square section of lettuces that's been keeping my family in salads for the last month and a half, and in front of that is some basil that someone else planted. I'm excited to see that coming up.

This is the first year that they've been open, so I'm sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Right now I go in every couple of weeks (I'd be in more often but I'm trying to get in some studio time as well), and I transplant a few things, and I plant a few things, and I harvest bags and bags of greens. There is a staff of interns and volunteers that keep everything watered, and there are hardly any weeds or bugs because it's inside. Maybe I'm the only person in the neighborhood that eats spinach or something, but I'm finding it hard to keep up. Every time I get the chance to visit someone says "That lettuce needs to be harvested." or "The Cilantro is bolting, why don't you take some home with you." It's MADNESS. Here's my haul from today. A pound and a half of Kale and a pound and a half of spinach.
Ragnar...gettin' her green on.

Requiem for a cat...

Last night we had to say good-bye to our cat. The grief hasn't hit me until just this second...something about looking for a picture of her for this post just made it all real.

We joked a lot about her, since she wasn't the brightest crayon in the box, and she had some irritating personal habits...like bringing half dead animals into the house to play catch and release with, but she was just about the sweetest natured kitty you could possibly know. When we first brought her home, she was out from behind the bathtub and sitting on our laps within half an hour, and everyone who came over remarked on how friendly she was.

Good-bye Splashy, it was nice to have you in the family. I hope you're in a good place where the cat nip is always fresh and plentiful, there are lots of half knit sweaters to lie on, and the food bowl is always full.

F is for....

Fiber art...or "fucked, if I don't finish this fiber art in time for the East Lansing Art Festival on May 17th."

I don't think of this blog as a "knitting" blog per se, but rather as a "humorous reflections on life," blog. Sort of like if Erma Brombeck and Dave Barry had a child and she was a pirate with a potty mouth who thought she was funnier than she really is, kinda sorta thing. If it's been awhile and I haven't had anything funny to write about, I put up a knitting post. Lately it's just been me barely scrapping by in the world of ABC along...and I'm going to do something about that really I am, 'cause it's lame damn it, and this here is the year of gooder blogging so that just won't fly.

I have done a few quilt posts in the past, but for some reason I have this feeling that my bleaders just aren't interested in quilting. Which is silly for several reasons, the first of which being the supposition that I actually have bleaders, the second being that I know most of the people who read my blog (hi Jiggy, hi Dr. Vic, hi Lavendurgle, hi, Layne, hi Nancy, hi Sarah, hi Diane) and they've never given me any indication that they wouldn't be interested in quilting.

So if you're coming along for the ride, you can expect a few more posts like this:

What have I been doing that's keeping me away from the blog? I've been chasing Ragnarson around the house in a semi crouched over position, and prying various choking hazards out of his mouth, and I've been "working." Working means driving over to pick up the babysitter, driving over to the studio and spending at most three or four hours dividing my time between co-wrangling the baby, and trying like hell to put together a few new pieces in time for the first art show of the season so that it's not painfully obvious that I'm showing pretty much exactly the same stuff that I was showing last year...

Last time I picked out some fabric:
And sewed some of it together:
Yeah: doesn't really look like three hours work does it? Have to step up the pace a bit. Thankfully Ragnarson seems to be over his teething at least for the moment, so at least he's in a pretty good mood.

Ragnar...baby wrangler

Extra Credit

In case you were keeping score, the answer to last weeks parenting question was:

Have a beer and eat peanut butter directly out of the jar.

E is for...and a conundrum

E is for eat, or a picture is worth a 1000 words:
And here's my conundrum, I never had to face these sorts of problems pre-infant.

If you own three pairs of pants, and two of them are in the wash, and the baby pees on the last one, and you have to pick up the other child from school in 20 minutes, is it better to switch the laundry into the drier and hope that miraculously two pairs of jeans will be dry in 20 minutes? Or should you start looking for the hairdryer to dry out the pee spot on the peed on pair. By the way, the baby is trying to kill himself as always, so you'll have to figure out some way to prevent him from offing himself while you either switch the laundry or look for the hairdryer. Alternately you could wear a pair of the Manimal's pants, but he is considerably shorter than you are, and although you could probably argue that 4 inches of ankle would make them "capri," it's doubtable that anyone is going to buy that, since they are "work" pants and have all manner of construction related stains/tears/burn marks.

What to do? What to do?

Ragnar, mother of an 8 month old.

Happy 8 month birthday Ragnarson, no no, don't put that in your mouth.

D is for...

Still playing Alphabet catch up, I haven't seen any G's yet, so I think I'm getting closer to the rest of the pack...anyway.




D is for Design...or Designer as the case maybe.


I'm starting to put designs down on paper. Or whatever the cyberspace equivalent of paper is, since so far I'm putting them down on Microsoft Word. I've even launched one of the little boogers out into cyberspace, and if I claimed that I didn't check Ravelry every day to see how many people had queued it, well then I would be lying. (4 projects, and in 35 queues...I can't even begin to tell you how twitter patted that makes me).

And I think I'm finally figuring it out a little bit. I've been knitting for about five years now, and I've been designing that whole time, since I knit the way I cook. "Hmm, what shall we make today? Let's look in the cookbook...how about a cheesecake? That sounds good. I like the shape of the cheese cake, but I'm not sure about the cheese part. I think I'll substitute radishes and see what happens." Manimal always stretches my knitability since he is very particular about his wardrobe. I've knit him several pairs of socks, none of which fit quite right, although they are all worn in an effort to demonstrate the fact that he is deserving of hand knit socks, many many hats most of which are worn out although again each was not quite as perfect as it could have been, and a sweater vest, which is too warm to wear.

Recently though, I managed to knit him a hat which meets his every criteria, and a sweater vest that he hasn't taken off since I finished it a week ago (both of which he is wearing in the picture above). What's particularly exciting to me is that the vest, the Arrrrgyle vest, was designed completely by me (Arrgyle was inspired by Julia over at Moth Heaven but I had a radically different stitch count than she did so I redrafted it) and that it worked out just the way I thought it would. Which is just down right crazy, and damn exciting. Now if you asked me to gradate it for different sizes I would look at you with my head cocked to one side and my tongue hanging out, but it's taken me five years to get here so in another five maybe I'll be able to create a real live pattern with multiple sizes and everything.

I know that this post sounds a little bit "Me me me meeeee, ain't I so great," but that's not the tone I'm trying to strike. I'm just excited that I've finally learned enough that I can start to make some of the things in my head come out into the yarn. It's sort of like taking French classes all through High School and then ordering a cup of coffee and a croissant at a cafe in Paris, and actually having them bring you one.

Ragnar...giddy.

Letting the chips fall...

You'd think that since I don't do my New Years until March that I'd have all my goals and ambitions for the next year all figured out by now...but I don't. I am working on it though, and I should post a nice introspective "my thoughts on 2008" post sometime in the next...9 months or so.

Instead you'll just have to slog through another baby post. I'm sorry, but that's just how it goes, you all are my support group, so you're the ones I turn to when, let's just say for instance, I look up and the baby is picking paint chips off the wall and eating them! Seriously! This is taking the anti-evolution, suicidal baby thing to a whole new level. Big stinkin' lead containing, splintery paint chips. Damn baby.

And I looked up from reading blogs last night and what did I see?

The table has been breached! This picture was taken this morning after I cleaned off all the random bits of yarn, stitch markers, half knit sweaters, slips of paper with important phone numbers on them, magazines, library books, net-flicks envelopes, pencils, head phones and all the other detritus that has built up in my nursing nest. Admittedly I haven't done much nursing in the nest lately, since Ragnarson is only interested in eating when he is on the final verge of sleepiness, otherwise there are so many other things to do (paint chips!). The nest is the corner that I retreat to during naps to get a few minutes of knitting in before the baby starts to squirm again. I spent last night tracking down all of my knitiphinalia and putting it away. I finished Eli's Arrrgyle yesterday, and the latest stitch challenge square last night, and as a result there were a few moments when I had NOTHING on the needles. I took a picture of my needle case, full to bursting.

Or course that doesn't mean that every project I am working on is done. There are several partially knit sweaters around. In the interest of truth, I did dig down to the bottom of the "time out" bin after taking that photo, only to discover that the unfinishable free wool sweater has a #6 needle in it that is holding some stitches until I can decide if I'm going to frog the sleeves or not...so technically speaking there was ONE lousy pair of needles that weren't in the case, but come on, you're not going to call me on that one are you?

As a start to the "new year of knitting" this is my current "in progress" list.

Super secret baby sweater: Pattern, Sue baby sweater from Elsebeth Lavold's Design Collection 6. Back finished. Front and sleeves, unstarted.

Ragnarson's bear: Pattern, Best Friend Bears, from Interweave knits Holiday 2006. Body finished. Arms partially stuffed. To finish: stuff arms, and sew to body, knit face and sew on. Why I haven't done this already? I have no idea. Technically speaking the bear is wearing a sweater, but I consider that a separate project, as yet unstarted.

The unfinishable free wool sweater: Pattern, loosely inspired by "Celtic Icon" from Inspired Cable knits. Body, finished. Sleeves, the cables on the sleeve caps aren't matching up, I think the simplest fix would be to frog both sleeves back to the armpit decreases, and reknit them simultaneously, which would only leave the hood. This is going to happen...uh...never.

Top Down Baby Sweater: Finished, but I think the neck and cuffs are too tight, I'm going to reknit them on a size 7 instead of a size 6. Thanks to last nights put-away-athon I now know where my #7 needle is.

All other unfinished projects have been tossed into the "FROGIT" pile. I can't even be bothered to frog them until I need the yarn for something else, since that would take up precious "nap" time that would better be spent knitting.

Ragnar....ruthless frogger of the high seas.

Spring Sprang Sprat...

It is March 21st, the Vernal Equinox, Naw Ruz, and there is a bloody great "winter weather" advisory on, and we are set to get upwards of 8 inches of snow. I would go and take a picture of it, but it would be fucking depressing. Go and get a piece of blank paper out of your printer, hold it about five inches away from your nose and that's what it looks like outside right now.

So I'm going to stay here in "denial" for a bit, and pretend that it still feels like the first day of spring.

Ragnarson turned 7 months old last Sunday, and thus far I haven't sat on him, lost him, or drown him in the bathtub, so you can imagine that I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. He celebrated his 7 month birthday by mastering the right, left, right, left crawl, although he still goes back to the seal/inchworm belly flop method when he get's excited, like when I've forgotten to put the cat food bowl up on the counter while he is in the kitchen.

I looked across the livingroom the other day and he was sitting up by himself, which was shocking enough that it was a full five seconds before I realized that the reason he was sitting quietly was because he was happily munching on a piece of paper that he wasn't supposed to have. I was surprised because up to that point he had shown no interest in being sat up, and would protest by flipping over on his back. I am seeing a pattern though, that I know all too well. The "I will learn new things by myself, thank you, and don't try to give me any advice, or heaven forbid, teach me anything, because I'm only interested in things that I figure out for myself," pattern. He is my son afterall, so this should come as no surprise.

He is hauling himself up on things as well, and I spent a few days following him around trying to prevent the thumps and bumps, but eventually I realized that I was just making things worse. I do cringe when I hear the cranium/floor thunk, but I actually hear it a lot less often now that I am just letting him do his own thing. So far the fun game seems to be "take things out of the toybox."

So I guess that's what spring means for me this year. Not the tender little green things, but new growth, definitely.

Ragnar...not sleeping is sort of like being drunk, except not so restful.

C is for...

Well if it was T, it would be "T is for my tardy ass," since other ABCers have moved on the bigger and better letters like "F." I'll be playing a little ABCatch-up.

Anyway. I toyed with the idea of making every single letter of the Alphabet be something baby related...in which case C would be for crawling, and T would be for terrifying, but I actually have a really good "C" with lots of pictures:

C is for Construction.

Siding is done. Now we just need wires, ducts, walls, drywall, cupboards and trim...so close and yet so far.

Ragnar...who doesn't play by the rules.

Publish or Perish

I have a new addiction: the pattern browser in Ravelry. It is something that I can do with one finger while listening to public radio podcasts, which is important since Ragnarson has a cold and as a result has completely given up sleeping in bed. He only likes to sleep on the boppy, on my lap, and since he's sick he's taking four or five hours worth of naps a day...sigh.

It's endless, there are over 4,000 patterns in the "free" section alone, and being the broke ass that I am, that's the section that interests me the most. In my Ravelry library alone I have around 100 pdf's, and at least that many on my computer as well...and those are just the patterns that I saved because I thought that I might someday, possibly, maybe, think about buying yarn with the intention of knitting them. I have to say though, having all those lovely patterns right at my fingertips just waiting to be printed out and slipped into plastic sheet protectors makes me feel like a wealthy wealthy woman.

Also makes me feel like a slacker, since I've been meaning to write up some of my patterns for ages.

And apparently making me feel like a slacker is a good way to motivate me, because today, while the baby was sleeping on my lap I typed out the pattern for the Flame On baby hat. I even went and found a freeware pdf converter, because I am a big old snob and only like my free patterns to be in pdf format. I was not so successful in finding a place to host pdf files though, so for the time being if you want it you will have to go and get it from the google documents site where I am hosting the word document...it's the same exact thing as the pdf, just not converted.

So go and get it. And if you're on Ravelry put it in your queue because that would make me feel all warm and gooshy on the inside. Hopefully in the next couple of days it will be downloadable from there as well, I'm just waiting to get my "designer" page linked to my "profile" page, and then I'm told, the magic will happen.

I'm hoping that this will be the first of several, if not many.

Ragnar....I'm a deeeesiiiiiiner.

B is for....

Since the other ABC alongers have moved on to C, I decided I might as well post my B. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone here that:

B is for Baby.

(Ragnarson, 2 days old)

B was going to be for Birth Story, which is the reason that this post was delayed. I have been working on it off and on since Ragnarson was born, but it is a long story which is hard for me to write. It's hard in one sense, because I don't remember a lot of it. I was in labor for more than 60 hours, and even though I was sleeping between contractions (HA!) that is a long time. In another sense it's hard because things did not go as planned. Instead of a quiet, peaceful birth center, birth-in-the-tub sort of birth, I got a crazy transfer-to-the-hospital, us-against-them sort of birth. It will be written in good time, and I will send it off to the birth center to post on their website along with all the other birth center babies. Even though I didn't end up actually birthing at the center, the midwives are still very important to me.

(2 months old)

When we finally brought Ragnarson home from the hospital I remember having this feeling of "What? Who the hell thought it was a good idea to send me home with a new born baby? Look at him, he's like a doll with no stuffing, what if I sit on him?" And breastfeeding did not take off smooth and easily. He lost a lot of weight, and I was, of course, obsessive about it. I remember once, when he was probably four or five days old. I was scrutinizing every diaper for "mustardy seedy texture," which was not what I was finding. I called the Birth Center, and talked to one of the midwives, trying to affect a casual tone, "I'm sure it's nothing, I'm just a little worried because his poop is still brown, and it seems like it should be more yellow by now." Not fooled in the least she said "Are you okay honey, do you want me to come over and weigh him?" "No" sniffle snort "I'm okay," although I obviously wasn't. "You're right on my way home," she said, "I'll just stop by and say Hi." Sniffle, snort, "Okay, thanks." Anyway...they are great people those midwives.

(4 months old)

So here's to birth! Every woman I know who's had a baby, especially the crazy hippy ones who've had "natural" births, is totally blown away by the experience. Half of them decide to start training as doulas or midwives, and god help me I'm right there with them. Pity my poor friends that had the misfortune to get pregnant after I did, because I am insufferable on the subject of babies.

6 months old, and for the record that is avacado up his nose, not a nasty green booger. You can see me knitting in the background as his sister is feeding him. I don't get avacado up his nose when I'm feeding him...or at least there isn't photographic evidence that I do.

I love you Ragnarson, thanks for making me into a Mama.

Ragnar...baby crazy, but still a pirate.

And then there were two...

A couple of months ago I posted a link to this picture, which ran in the local college paper. You might not get a good impression of what I am knitting, but it's a pair of toe up socks, inspired by Ann Budd's article in a recentish Interweave Knits...actually not that recent considering that I was still pregnant when I started this &%**&%)*@ project.

Here is a more representational picture which I took in a brief (naptime!) whirl wind of documenting fever...the better to update my Ravelry Notebook...which has yet to be updated.

For some reason I thought that my first "toe up" project would be a good time to try the "two at once" technique as well...in for a penny in for a pound. And since I suffer from that peculiar disease that causes me spend 2 hours unraveling a tangled skein rather than cutting it (after all that would be two more ends to weave in and that would be tedious and take approximately a minute and a half...yeah), I decided that rather than weigh and divide the ball of yarn half, I would just knit from both ends at the same time. Because that way I would be able to squeeze every last bit of possible yarn out of the ball, and I wouldn't have to throw away that yard and a half that didn't get evenly divided....waste not want not, right?

Turns out that knitting two socks at the same time from opposite ends of the ball is really really irritating. The yarn gets tangled in the needles. The yarn from the inside of the ball has more twist than the yarn from the outside of the ball, and you can't untwist it because it's all connected together. The yarn gets unwound and there is no way to wind it back on it's self because you're knitting off of the outside of the ball. I could go on. I won't though, because none of you are silly enough to try knitting socks that way.

I decided to "fix" the problem by winding the remaining skein into a ball so that both ends were coming off the same side. Not having swift I unwound the ball by wrapping it around a basket. When I got to the point where the two ends met each other I started a traditional round yarn ball, like what the kitties play with. For a few days I knit off the new improved ball...which was not so much improved, since the yarn still got seriously tangled up...although the over twist problem seemed to have been solved at least.

Realizing that I wasn't getting anywhere I unwound the ball once again...this time using a real swift. When I got to the middle of the ball I, steady now, I know you'll all be shocked by this...CUT THE YARN INTO TWO PIECES. Got that? Two socks, two balls of yarn. Whoa. That's the state that is memorialized in the picture above. This was a vast improvement, since two balls means that if the yarn becomes tangled, you can untangle it...shocking, no? However, there is the problem of having two wee balls of yarn rolling around you while you're knitting, and having to stop every few rows to wind them back up and untangle them from your needles.

Then I had a dream. I have been having a lot of dreams lately. I think it's because I spend a lot of time in the "not quite asleep" stage that mothers who are co-sleeping with nursing babies get to know so well. Anyway. In my dream instead of having two socks, and two balls of yarn on two circular needles, I had two socks, and two balls of yarn, but they were each ON THEIR OWN NEEDLE. Crazy the things that come to you when you are half asleep.

Check it out.

And can I just say? Magic loop? No effing kidding magic loop, that shit is the bomb.

Ragnar...who has been up three times during this post to nurse the baby back to sleep...I'll decide when you're done napping you little...precious baby.

The wagon is so easy to fall off of...

They need to put rails on that damned wagon or something, you really have to hold on tight and even then, one little bump and there you are in the middle of the road, watching the wagon drive off without you.

By which you will probably be able to guess that the finish-2-start-1 "suggestion" (as we pirates know, all the rules are really just suggestions) has been suspended due to a knitting emergency. Yes there is such a thing as a knitting emergency! (please to notice new skull stitch markers...thanks no-longer-secret-pal Jennifer).

It was a dark and stormy night...okay it was an unseasonably warm night. It was in fact the night before a friend's baby shower. It was 11 o'clock. We had no baby presents in the house. Sure there were plenty of toys with just a little bit of drool on them, but regifting slightly used baby toys is sort of a shower no-no. Turns out that some Mom's are pretty crazy about their baby's toys, and only like to have pristine, drool free toys...and anyway, toys are a lousey baby shower present anyway, because the baby can't play with them for 3 or 4 months and until then they are just in your way. What you need for a baby shower is something that makes the Mom-to-be, who is very pregnant, and uncomfortable, think "Awwww, baby stuff is cute, it'll be great fun to have a baby." Or at least that's what I assume...at my shower people got me things like flamey legwarmers, and shirts with pithy sayings on them...and this of course made me think "Awwww, there's punk-rock-gothy-evil baby shit in the world, it's gonna be so much fun to have a baby."

By miraculous co-incidence, I had just that afternoon reorganized my stash. It was miraculous, because the baby had taken "a nap." I had heard of naps, but thought that they were a part of baby lore, like the one about how they like their carseats, that didn't apply to mine. My baby sleeps during the day, but he likes to sleep on me, making it impossible to do anything but sit in "the chair" and surf the net (ahem, my Ravelry cue, ahem), and try to knit without waking up the little booger. To me this does not constitute a nap. But on this day, the miraculous day, he had slept in a bed, in another room, and did not start making little squawking baby noises for ONE HOUR AND 45 MINUTES. I'm having a plaque made. So after "I put the baby down for his nap" (just thinking those words makes me feel all trembly) and I went in to the living room, gently closing the bedroom door behind me, I realized that I had no idea what to do with myself. There were chores to be accomplished, of course, but somehow the lure of the "big box of yarn" seemed so much stronger. So I spread the stash all over the living room....it was blissful.

Mmmm, blurry stash photo. We're knit bloggin' now!

With stash freshly sorted, and baby shower in sight, it became obvious that the writ of Finish-thy-projects had to be suspended. What was needed was a quick and easy baby pattern. Hats were out, not only because all my hat appropriate yarns were too itchy for baby, but because I knew that Ginger was knitting baby hats. Which brings us to "The Eleventh Hour Baby Booties."

Nothin' makes you go "Awwww" like itty bitty booties.

The pattern: Saartje's Booties. Which is a free pattern, and you should go knit a pair, or two or three.

The yarn: Tristan, by Louet. Which is linen plyed with merino...quite lovely. I knit Manimal a hat out of it, and the rest of the skein has been languishing in the big blue yarn tub. I probably have enough left over for another pair of emergency booties.

And since this was an emergency project I don't feel that I have violated any "suggestions" or solemn vows or whatever...but here's a question. If you finish a project that you never started, does it count toward finish-2-start-1? And if you finish a pair of somethings, isn't that really finishing two individual somethings, and doesn't that mean that I now get to cast something on? And further more. I frogged a project while I was sorting yarn, so that is in a way finishing something (as in, "you're finished" said the hero to the villain), is it not?

By my count I am one ahead in the finishing department.

Whoo hoo! See ya at the yarn store!

Ragnar...the important thing is that I convince myself that it's true.