AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

Craft mathematics

I don't know about you, but I definitely have too many projects that I want to get done. Christmas is only a couple of short months away, but most of the projects I want to do aren't even gifts. They are projects that I either started shortly before starting maternity leave or they are projects from the way back machine.

My husband made a cross-stitch project for me using chocobo sprites. It's for an iPhone case, and I started it a month or so before going on leave. At the time I last worked on it, I had figured out that I would be able to finish it in a month if I did at least 45 stitches a day. Needless to say, I haven't worked on it since then. Definitely not 45 stitches a day.

I started Spectra, and would theoretically need about 20 more days if I got two repeats done each day. That's not happening either. Whoops!

And then there is this cross-stitch I started way before moving to Kentucky. It is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: To laugh often and much. I made the mistake of calculating how long it would take me to finish if I could complete 6 letters (or blocks, etc.) each day. The number of letters was pretty arbitrary, based on how many I actually got done today. As Q gets a little older, he is moving slightly away from needing a feeding every 1.5 hours, which allows me to get a few more things done. Of course, that includes some cleaning, making ice cream, and occasionally cooking dinner (thank goodness for the slow cooker).

The sad thing is even if I was making Christmas gifts, I would still be doing stupid math like that. Do you do that when you are working on projects (for deadline or not)?

It's a hat!

Yawn!

When my mom was here at the beginning of October, we took her to what I jokingly referred to as crafter's row. Rosemont Garden has a bead shop, a gift shop, a random vintage/antique shop and Rebelle (fiber shop). We visited the different shops with Q in tow.

ReBelle is friendly to the breastfeeding set, so there was a bit of a break there and I wanted to buy a skein of yarn to make a baby hat. My last hat was a bit too small for even Q's newborn head, and while he has a few hats, none in his size were hand knits.

I bought a single skein of Koigu, which I had never worked with. There just weren't a lot of shops in the Boston area that sold it. Heck, I'm not sure any of my old local shops sold it. Even if they had sold it, I'm sure it wouldn't have done as well for me, because I gravitate towards yarns with descriptive color names. Color numbers are just not nearly as interesting.

Koigu KPPPM in P812 is a golden yellow with bits of blue and other colors. It took me about a week to knit the hat, using stolen bits of time. It then took me about 2 weeks to block the hat. It is a little big now, but promises to grow as Q grows.

The pattern is Cable Baby (rav link), a simple cabled rib. There are instructions in the pattern to add or remove a repeat to make a bigger/smaller hat, but I made the basic size.

At ReBelle, I also bought a small bottle of unscented Euculan. I don't like it quite as much as my bottle of Soak, but I haven't managed to unearth that in the process of unpacking. If you find it, please let me know (it's probably in the bottom of one of my yarn boxes). Otherwise, I might order it online when I run out again. Soak is awesome stuff.

Sleepy baby in a cute little cabled hat. I know he will grow into it. We can already see his growth. Each time we put him in one of his onesies, we can see how he is filling it out differently from the last time he wore it.

I have a lot of knitting and cross-stitch I want to do, so I think my posts are going to increase once I grow another pair of arms to do all of the things. Happy knitting all!

Nearly bald

Baby Q now has the longest hair (of the humans) in the house.

I told my friends that I was going to chop all of my hair off when I had my baby. Well, Q was born a few weeks ago, and yesterday my husband handed me one of the beard and hair trimmers and we got rid of all of my hair during one of Q's naps.

It's a definitely buzz job, and it shows off that I have a nicely shaped had. Now I don't need to find time for a real adult haircut, and have more time to make another batch of ice cream or cookies.

I posted the picture to Facebook, and most of the comments I have are about how I've made myself immune to hair grabbing in a few months once Q wants to pull on all the things. I get to use the next few months to decide if I like it enough to keep my hair like this.

What do you think?

In other news, I am getting used to life with baby, so I am getting back to knitting. I have a finished hat that is still waiting for blocking. In longer term knits, I am working on Spectra. I should be able to get a picture of that later in the week.

Gotta run. I should be napping right now!

Caramel Swirl

Bambino time!

So, our baby isn't the only one to celebrate. We have a couple of friends who are expecting their first early next year, so when we were going to get together I made ice cream.

Yes, that is a plastic baby figure in the ice cream. When we had the going away party/baby shower before we moved, my friends got plastic baby figures (some with mohawks a la carrot jockeys at Cake Wrecks) and put then on mini-cupcakes. We saved and washed some of the babies and moved them to Lexington.

So, when I was going to make a special ice cream for my friends, we decided to add the baby figurines like a king cake. I made the cheesecake ice cream from The Perfect Scoop, and added a salted caramel swirl for a caramel swirl bambino ice cream. My salted caramel sauce was based on the Smitten Kitchen recipe. I substituted unsalted butter for the salted butter and used sea salt to add the salt flavor to taste.

Now, I had a lot of caramel left after I made the caramel swirl bambino ice cream, so I used the remaining sauce to make a salted caramel ice cream with cream bourbon. I used the instructions for the ice cream base and added all of the remaining caramel sauce without even measuring it. We did buy peaches to use the same presentation as the blog post, but in the end we just ate the ice cream straight.

Yum!

our greatest wip

Stage 1 is complete and a beautiful baby boy is born! Now comes the rest of the project, a WIP that will last 18 or more years and be full of love, fun, games, and certainly a few trials^*.

Oh, baby Q, we love you so much!

Now, it isn't apparent from the picture (from the hospital, we've been home for about a week), but baby Q was a skinny baby at 7 pounds, 9 ounces and almost 20 inches long. He, like his parents, was born with a full head of beautiful brown hair. He has blue eyes for now, and long brown eyelashes.

He is super sweet and a champion baby, eating and doing other standard baby things with abandon.

His cuteness is making it a little difficult for me to knit, but I already have a hat on the needles for him. One of the ones I made during the last month was a little too small. I need to find a local group to donate it to, because it is probably great for a baby with a slightly smaller head or a baby that is sadly preemie.

More baby (and knitting, this is still a knitting blog after all) pictures to come, but I figured I should break the silence!

^*My mom was here for a visit, and that is always a good reminder that I wasn't always a good kid. I expect that we will have some times that are similar, though hopefully none as bad as the great dishes debacle when I was 14. What? I didn't want to wash dishes. Who does?