Viking Tea Party

Feed Me, Seymour!

Want to see the blood glucose meter the NHS gives you if you have gestational diabetes?  Here you go:

 

I'm only kind of kidding.  I used it last night for the first time and got an error message seven times: not enough blood/use a new strip.  After I burst into extra drippy hormonal tears, Matt convinced me to stop trying until we could buy a "real" meter in the morning.  This morning I tried Audrey II one last time and got another error so it was off to Boots for a new meter.  We bought an Accu-Chek Aviva Nano because his dad recommended it and it worked great.  Not only did I get a healthy reading but it worked the very first time and it didn't hurt, thank goodness! 

Speaking of hormones and good news...one stress I've had recently has had to do with deciding when my parents were going to visit in November.  Obviously, babies rarely ever come on time- especially first babies - so it's been really difficult.  Too soon and they might miss the baby all together - too late and Mom would explode with anxiousness.  The other day, though, they announced during a Skype chat that Mom was taking a short leave of absence for the month of November and, if it was okay with us, she's going to come on the first and stay about three weeks and Dad will come a week later.  Some women, I'm sure, wouldn't look forward to that at all but it makes me insanely happy. 

I'm due on October 30th so we could spend two weeks twiddling our thumbs but...hopefully not!  I really like the idea of having her here before our little acorn arrives.  I could use a little help with the, ahem, nesting.  I also have this feeling that he won't hide out for too long but that could just be my own anxious hopefulness.  My intuition was right about him being a boy but I had a fifty-fifty chance with that one after all!

And now for a little knitting! 

I heart baby hats.  Tiny, quick and the cutest little things ever.

This is the Greenleaf Baby Hat knit with some leftover Stitch Nation Alpaca Love which, besides being hand wash only, is perfect for baby hats because it's so soft.   

And this is Emmett's Apple Hat knitted with Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmere which is one of my favorite yarns to knit with.  The stitch definition is gorgeous and the colors are really vibrant.  As cute as this pattern is, it was the "Emmett" part that really drew me in because that's been one of our top name choices for the little acorn.  Matt came up with it because he likes my name so much.  I know that, thanks to Twilight (which I'm, ironically, watching right now), it's not going to be as uncommon as it used to be but I like it.  It actually reminds me more of Emmett Otter's Jug-Band Christmas and it reminds Matt of Back to the Future.  We've been referring to him as Emmett instead of Ola recently but we're still undecided.  Some of the women from my mom's office voted and, of the three names we like, they liked Emmett best which I thought was kind of funny.  I like that my mom finally has a future grandchild to talk about. 

Whew, I think this post is long enough - hope everyone is having a great day!

This One's For You, Kim (Well, the First Part, Anyway)

Matt had to work yesterday so I did something unusual and got out of the house not too long after he left and at least a little before the tourists started to flood the cathedral close.  No tourists meant that I could finally take a decent photo of Mompesson House.

 

Mompesson was built in 1701 and I'm sure there are those who love it for it's historical value. I guess you could say I love it for it's historical value as well - just a much more recent history.  If you're a big fan of Sense and Sensibility you might recognize this as Mrs. Jennings' London home which means...Alan Rickman was here.

 

I couldn't find a photo from the actual movie but you can see the same sign to the right of Mr. Rickman in the first photo. 

We actually went inside a couple of weeks ago when Matt's dad and stepmom came to visit but we'd already been walking around quite a bit and the bump and I had had it so after taking a glance at the extensive Turnbull drinking glass collection and the album of photos taken during the shooting of Sense and Sensibility (the above photo is one of them), Matt and I sat outside while they took a tour.  

Colonel Brandon is one of my favorite roles Rickman has played because it shows that he can be a good guy just as well as he can be a bad guy.  Brandon is also probably my favorite Austen male character (and not because Rickman played him in the movie).  I've never been a big fan of Pride and Prejudice (gasp, I know) and never really liked Mr. Darcy (double gasp) either.  Colonel Brandon is where it's at.

Unfortunately, my pleasant, quiet day took a turn when I opened the front door and heard the phone ringing.  My glucose test results were back and...I have gestational diabetes.  Anything above 7.8 is abnormal and mine came in at 8 so I failed it by a ridiculous, maddening amount.  It's not life altering or anything, thankfully, but I was still disappointed and had a rather rough rest of the day. 

I can tell you right now that my problem isn't sweets but those other tasty things that break down into sugars like the baked potatoes I've been craving and that we have for dinner at least twice a week.  Oh how I'm going to miss baked potatoes....

I have an appointment to talk to someone about my diet and pick up my machine on Friday and then another appointment with a midwife who isn't my regular midwife the following Tuesday but I was so thrown by the results that I honestly have no idea exactly what the midwife appointment is for.  I have an appointment with my midwife (my last, unfortunately, as she's moving to Scotland) on Thursday and am really looking forward to talking to her about it.

Time to get ready for knit group where I should be able to finish up the sleeves on the tiniest cardigan ever!

Froggy Friday

You've heard of WIP Wednesday and FO Friday, right?  Yeah, well, Froggy Friday is the usually unseen and less popular fourth cousin

First off, the one you might have already guessed...remember this little crochet sweater that I asked your opinion on a couple of weeks ago?  It's fate has been decided.

 

There were lots of fantastic suggestions and I thank you for each and every one.  I really contemplated finishing it and putting it aside so that I'd have a gift for a someone having a girl.  I even got momentarily excited because Ginny had just had a baby girl but by the time it was cool enough for her to wear it, it definitely wouldn't fit.  That thing was tiny. 

Then, as I was searching for buttons for my latest Pebble Vest, I found these...

 

Sorry for the lousy photos - it's incredibly overcast and rainy today

I did a little research and they could possibly be French buttons from as early as WWI or WWII but one site also said they're also still being made.  These, obviously, aren't new but I can't really imagine they're from the early 1900's. They either came from a tin that Mom bought for me in an antique shop or a giant tub that my granny found at a garage sale so who knows?

Then I thought about Chris' suggestion of adding buttons and patches to the original crocheted sweater to give it a military feel.  So, as strange as it may seem to use buttons that could potentially be from WWI on a baby sweater...I might use buttons that could potentially be from WWI on a baby sweater.  Maybe.  I could have added them all the way down the crocheted sweater but I still wasn't happy with the crocheted look so I frogged it.  Done and done.

And I'm not even going to think twice about the fact that a Pebble Vest takes exactly seven buttons!  :)

And then there's the Easy Baby Cardigan.  My original idea was to add crocheted loops and buttons after it was finished but I liked that idea less and less with every monotonous stockinette row.  When I got about an inch away from starting on the garter stitch bottom band I decided it's big enough for him to wear more than once or twice which warranted frogging it back and adding button holes.  So, in a matter of minutes, this...

...became this!

Ack! 

I had another reason for frogging it - not a great reason but a second reason none the less.  There was a medium sized pool of purple on the back (you can kind of see in the first photo) that bothered me a little bit and now I can fix that, too.  

All is not lost - I do have a finished project!  Granted, that finished project is a third Pebble...

I'm not really footloose and fancy free when it comes to color (even though that's my word for 2010) .  I'm not good at matching things at all.  That said, the buttons are all the same...just different, muted colors.  I also picked out several shades of orange buttons that looked good but I forced myself to put them back because I was leaning toward all the same shade rather than mixing them up.  These buttons are better than brown buttons on a brown sweater but they're still safe.  Thankfully, I still have a few months to work on that color thing....

A Pair of Pants That Aren't...Pants

I have really struggled with one particular word that's used differently here from the way it's used in the states.  It's such a commonly used word that a fellow Raveler even warned me about it before my first trip to visit Matt nearly two years ago. 

The word is "pants" and here it means underpants. As in, "When Matt grabbed a towel from the hamper to blot up the water that suddenly started running down the sitting room wall during a storm on Saturday, a pair of my pants tumbled out with it and neither of us noticed so they laid there on the floor for a few minutes, in front of his dad and stepmom, before I spotted them."  And yes that really happened and I can't stop thinking about it.  I'm more upset about the pants than the leak. 

Anyway, I have the hardest time remembering to say "trousers" or "jeans" when I mean those things that you wear over your underpants.  And you have no idea how many times you use a word until you really have to think about it because, suddenly, you're using it wrong all the time.  

Why all this pants talk?  Because I finally took pictures of the Kanoko Pants I finished knitting last week!  And these pants are the kind you wear over the other kind.  Or rather, you wear them over a diaper. 

As I was knitting these I thought the legs were going to turn out impossibly long but they actually, I think, turned out perfect for the size of 3 - 6 months (the pattern says this size fits 3 - 9 months but I think getting them to fit at 9 months would be quite a stretch - no pun intended).  I like the pattern so much that I already know I'd like to eventually knit the largest size (18 - 24 months).  

 

Now that I'm in my third trimester I'm feeling a lot better about being pregnant.  The hormones have calmed down - at least for now - so the fact that my family is four thousand miles away doesn't weigh so heavily and constantly on my mind.  More things are starting to ache, I napped for about three hours today and couldn't have stayed awake if I'd wanted to, I have acid reflux every night and Matt and I have decided that I have to be getting bigger each and every day but being in a better place, mentally, makes everything easier (along with that fact that he's nearly constantly kicking, swatting, punching and rolling around in there these days).  For now, anyway.  

I'm in between knitting projects right now since I just finished a third Pebble Vest...it's currently on the blocking mat.  

It's a breeze to knit and such a cute pattern that it was just too hard not to cast on a new one while I was contemplating what to knit next.  Plus I had seen the ones a Ravelry friend of mine had made last year (ten of them!  I have a lot of catching up to do) and I wanted to try her technique of using mismatched, multicolored buttons because it looks really good.  

I still don't know what I'm going to knit yet, though.  I have three (maybe four, I can't remember) skeins of Colinette Cadenza in pretty Adonis Blue that I'd like to make something out of but it's variegated so I'm looking for something simple.  Maybe the Easy Baby Cardigan but with buttons and loops.  

I feel like a lot of my posts end with "Now I have to go eat something" but I can't help it...I have to go eat something!

Another Sweater Vest

I love this color but there was only one skein of it available so I thought I would give the Baby T-Shirt Vest pattern a try.  "Try" is the key word here.  I got to the point where you put some stitches on waste yarn and knit others for the armholes and I got completely turned around.  Forty-five other people have knitted this patten with no problem at all so I blamed it on pregnancy brain (the same brain that almost brushed my teeth with hand soap the other night), frogged it and fell back on the lovely Pebble pattern again.

Love the color, love the pattern, do not love the yarn.  That’s what I get for knitting this pattern in a soft wool/alpaca/tweed (Knit Picks City Tweed) and then knitting it a few days later with something that’s 70% acrylic. I’d say I’ve become a yarn snob but I just knitted a hat with Vanna’s Choice which is 100% acrylic but still nice to knit with.

I found these little anchor buttons in my stash while looking for red buttons for the other Pebble sweater.  Unfortunately there were only four of them but I still wanted to use them so on the shoulder they went.  I named this - the Desolation Island Sweater Vest - after a book from the Master and Commander series by my Matt's favorite author, Patrick O’Brian.  And here's a little geeky tidbit: last Monday Matt had lunch with the man who painted all of the covers for the series with the thought of perhaps doing a documentary on them.  The documentary is still up in the air but, regardless, I think it's pretty cool that Matt got to hang out with him for an afternoon.  

In nursery news, the tree has been painted but I think I'll wait until Matt paints the wood trim before I take any pictures.  It looks fantastic!  Matt dug out my fabric stash boxes and I found some fabric to at least start making leaves with once we pick up some glue and he does the icky, chemically, spray part for me.  It's really starting to look like a baby's room!

And now - starving - must eat!

Finished Bowls and Beanies

A lot can happen in 24 hours.  Matt's upstairs putting the second coat on the tree.  He deemed painting it "overrated" and suggested, instead of helping him, that I go in tomorrow with a small, not so fumy pot of paint and put on the final touches.  That's okay by me - I'll gladly use the time to add a few projects to Ravelry and write up a post!

I had to bring the outdoors in this afternoon to photograph my little Turtle Bowl since we ended up not going out after all. 

I'm not really sure what we'll put in this little bowl but it'll look really cute on his chest of drawers.  You're actually supposed to double the yarn but I didn't want it to turnout ginormous (and I don't follow directions very well) so I only used a single strand.  The bowl is a bit flimsy so I think I'm going to line it with a little felt.

I know I've already mentioned the Baby Beanies book a million times but it is so freaking cute!  My plan is to knit all of the hats in it that are suitable for a boy over the next couple of years (or, at this rate, months).  I started with the Bedtime Stocking Cap.

We went a little crazy with a line of baby clothes (onesie, hoodie, sweatpants and a blanket) that we found on sale at Target that featured helicopters in these colors so I figured they were perfect for a stripey hat.

And this is my second hat from the book - the Chocqua. 

I knitted both of these in the 0-6 month size but I feel like I should have made this one a little taller.  It's cute, regardless, and makes me wish I had some Thin Mints...or Junior Mints.  Mmm, Junior Mints....

I can't help but think these beanies would be SO much cuter if we had a little noggin to model them but even if our little acorn were already here, he still wouldn't be posing for any blog photos.  When I posted that first scan photo we decided that that would probably be the last photo of the baby that I would post.  That rule might temporarily be broken when the baby first arrives but after that it will probably just be glimpses of chubby baby fingers and baby toes.  I think there's just something a little...scary isn't the word I'm looking for but it's close...about putting photos of our little one out there on the world wide web.  But do note that I used the word "probably" twice.  :)

I can't wait to to take the tape off the wall in the morning and see what our tree looks like.  After the tree is finished, Matt just (easy for me to say) needs to paint the trim and the ceiling and we can start moving in furniture and hanging pictures (that all need frames - yet another thing to add to the list of things to do)!  My future is also FULL of leaf making....

The Nursery, Bumps and More (Almost) Finished Objects

Yesterday we started taping the stencil for the tree we're going to paint in our little acorn's room and will, hopefully, start painting tomorrow. I know pregnant women aren't supposed to be anywhere near a room while it's being painted but my mom pointed out that she and Dad painted every room in our first house while she was pregnant with my brother and he went on to join a special program in elementary school for super smart kids and also made his older sister look bad by constantly being a straight A student. 

That said,  Matt has agreed to let me help paint the tree as long as the window is open, both fans are in the room and turned on high...and that I wear a mask.   Not too keen on the mask, honestly, but I did get him to let me swap an actual painter's mask for a handkerchief tied around my face like an old fashioned bank robber.  I''m short, too, so I won't really be able to help paint too much but I really wanted to have something to do with painting the tree.  We came up with a couple of cute ideas to make it very personal that I'm really looking forward to as well. 

 

Hey look, I'm pregnant!  First off, this is not a very good photo but it was the only one where I didn't happen to be holding the tape in front of my bump.  Second, I have to tell you that I have been really bump-shy.  I'm a member of the November 2010 Parents group over on Ravelry and have been avoiding the "show your bump" thread like a pregnant woman avoids unpasteurized cheese.  I do not have a cute bump like the girls do over there and it's a little frustrating and, honestly, a bit disappointing. 

I actually have two bumps.  Bump A which is my belly bump and Bump B which is my uterus bump. Bump A has always been bigger than Bump B - even before my uterus got big enough to actually be part of Bump A - so I didn't look like I was pregnant, I looked like I had a pot belly.  Not cute.  About a week ago, though, it suddenly popped out and I look like I have a baby in there, not just a few pints and a very large lunch.  Thank goodness.

And even though I love the thought of getting the nursery painted and the furniture ordered so that I can start putting away all of the cute little things we've bought so far, I've yet to feel any real nesting instinct other than the one that's in my head when I first wake up.  This instinct thinks getting a long list of things done sounds not only very rewarding but also like loads of fun!  Fortunately, that voice has gone totally silent by the time I've had my All Bran and settled down with my knitting/crocheting at 10:20 a.m. to watch Gilmore Girls.  I do manage to get the basics done, though, and I figure the days of casually watching tv with some yarn in my hands is going to come to an abrupt end here in about three months so I'm going to cram in as much as I can while I can.    

Yesterday I crocheted up a cute little addition to the nursery but still need to take photos of it. It's the kind of project that would really benefit from an outdoor shoot, though, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.  And today I knitted up a bit of stripey goodness...

...but with stripes come lots and lots of ends to sew in so that and attaching the tassel are my two jobs for the evening.  After I wash the dishes, hang up one more load of laundry and vacuum the floor...which I should get started on now....

A Sunday Sweater

I've finally finished a sweater for the little acorn!  Okay, it's not a sweater exactly - it's a vest - but it's finished.  I have one sweater needing buttons and two that need sleeves and buttons so finishing is a pretty big deal. 

I have a lot of love for this pattern - the Pebble Vest by Nikol Lohr - and am resisting the urge to cast on another in a different color.  I found one skein of a beautiful blue wool on sale today and stumbled across some really cute little buttons with anchors on them while looking for these red buttons in my stash today so I might give the similar but completely different Baby T-Shirt Vest pattern a try instead.

This would make a great little gift for a mother-to-be.  I was able to knit it in a day - granted I spent a couple of hours working on it at my knit group and happily spent most of the evening on it as well - and blocked and sewed on the buttons today. 

It's just the teeny, tiniest little thing, though, so he won't get too much wear out of it.  Unfortunately, I didn't check the yarn label of this Knit Picks City Tweed DK until after I'd finished knitting it so I didn't know that I was knitting up a hand wash only baby garment.  That said, in this case not getting a lot of wear out if it is not exactly a bad thing.  Thankfully, the wool I bought today is machine washable.  I made sure to check before I bought it. 

C-U-T-E!

Little baby things with skulls on them are so cute!

Stress Relief Through Stitching

I mentioned in my next to last post that I didn't really like being pregnant.  Honestly, that was barely scratching the surface.  I'm having a really rough time.  Bad days, big tears.  All of my issues don't have to do with actually being physically pregnant but I'm sure the hormones aren't helping. 

I needed a stress reliever - something to take my mind off things - so I finally pulled out the Forest Friends embroidery patterns I purchased from Sublime Stitching last month.  I'd forgotten how much I loved pulling a needle and thread through fabric and spent nearly the entire day stitching away except for the quick trip I took into town to buy a few more colors.  I've got to go through my unpacked craft boxes soon because I already have a pretty good stash of thread and really can't afford to pay a crazy 85p/$1.35 per skein to build up a new stash.  Plus I've got several other pattern sets from Sublime Stitching that I'd love to play around with again.

This owl was the first thing I limbered up on yesterday.  

 

Then I put the colors away and stitched this little hedgehog,

 

Now I'm working on the squirrel.  I'm taking my time and really making sure my stitches are even and feeling a little less stressed with each one of those little stitches.  And, Catherine, I had to go through French knot lessons again!  

 

I'm going to dig through my fabric stash, too, and back each of these with a matching fabric to make little stuffed animals for the baby's room or maybe a little mobile.

Speaking of the little acorn, I'm 25 weeks along and had a checkup today and got to experience one of the really great things about being pregnant: hearing the heartbeat for the first time.  At my only other midwife appointment she couldn't find the heartbeat so I actually ended up having a scan instead.  And regardless of how I feel on the inside, she told me that I looked great and that pregnancy really suited me which was really nice to hear. 

Another thing that makes me feel better is looking at baby clothes and we did a little of that this afternoon.  I know everyone oohs and ahs over cute clothing for girls but boy's clothes are pretty darn cute, too!   Picturing the little man who will fit into them also does a pretty good job of pushing aside a few of my problems - we can't wait to meet him.