AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

[10 Tuesday] It's spring outside

This morning we had snow. Not a lot of accumulation, but blustery. Walking Victor was an exercise in snow down the back of my sweat jacket in one direction and a calm winter storm (if any storm can be called calm) in the other. I got to work and unfortunately was not as healthy as I thought I was. I'm only not in bed, because Mr. Victor needs his ear meds and dinner, which normally happen closer to 7:30.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday were all in the 70s and 80s. Given I've had a lot of outdoor time lately, here are the 10 things I like to do outside.

1. Walk. Usually it is walking Victor, but with a little one I normally walk Victor while carrying Q. Of course, yesterday I decided to leave Q in the stroller, so he napped a bit while Victor and I visited all of the trees.

2. Eat ice cream. I haven't really found an ice cream shop within walking distance, but in Massachusetts we would walk to Dairy Freeze and get a scoop if we were doing a long walk. It is important to balance the benefits of walking after all.

3. Run. I haven't run in months (and months. I might have run out of fingers and toes for the months at this point), but I enjoy running, training for half marathons and 5Ks mostly.

4. Garden. I'm desperately bad at it. Now I have a brighter yard with fewer trees and a longer growing season, so I am trying again with spinach, broccoli, tomatoes and pumpkins. Oh, and a few onion sets to try and ward off the vermin who think my produce is their produce.

5. Knit. I still do it. It almost never happens outside, but I enjoy it no matter where it happens.

6. Farmer's markets. I haven't been to any of the markets in Lexington, but it is on the list of things to do.

7. Can I lie and say I love to drive? I don't really. I am still learning, so I mostly love what driving represents. Today it might have represented going home earlier (though probably not, because there is still only one car for our household), and in the future it represents trips to things like Squam, family visits and even the daily trek to work. Oh, and going through the drive through at Starbucks. Hey, carrots and sticks, carrots and sticks!

8. Grilling. I love the idea of eating outside or at least cooking outside when the weather is nice. We have a second hand grill that needs replacement parts before we can enjoy that.

9. Swimming. Growing up that meant the ocean. Here it will almost certainly mean pools.

10. Trips to the park. We went over the weekend and Q got to have his first time in the swings, going gently back and forth. It was a long trip walking, but we had a bit of a picnic lunch and Q had a lot of firsts. I had one of my firsts as well. First sunburn of the season.

Someone is too q-te.

Mild mannered, focused corporate CEO by day (though that face isn't giving out any bonuses soon) and cucumber-powered super hero by night, behold Q-cumberman.

Yeah, we love the PhotoShop.

Q is slowly learning to enjoy some solids. Not that he is eating them so much as tasting them and leaving them damaged, but not appreciably altered. The latest one was a single piece of cucumber from my salad at lunch when I worked from home on Monday. 

My husband took tons of pictures of the cucumber action. It made my short lunch break loads of fun as Q explored the different tastes and textures available to him, including the high chair itself. 

The cucumber had a bitter victory. Bruised and thrown out, but not actually eaten.

It's hard to believe that Q is nearly 6 months old. It is about time for me to finish another sweater for him. The Waffles I finished before he was born is a little short in the sleeves. I have a striped one on the needles that is waiting for a single sleeve and then the collar/button bands. It's the Assymetrical Wraplan (or something like) and is a pretty quick knit even for someone who is only getting about 4 rows done a week.

Of course, I might be finished a lot faster if I wasn't alternating 4 rows a week on about 5 different projects.

What are you working on?

Happy Friday world!

Cuteness [redacted]

Q shows how big his heart is!

About once a week or so I get asked how I am enjoying Lexington. It feels like such a weird question. I don't feel like I have a good basis for comparison. I mean, I normally compare it to small town Maine, because it feels more like a small town than city, especially with the neighborhood feel. But really, I went from being a married couple in a house to a mother in a house, and that mother title means I feel like nothing is an apples to apples comparison. 

I am still adjusting to being a parent and working. The biggest area this shows is in my knitting. As in, is it even happening. The answer is yes, but super duper slowly. I started a pair of baby leg warmers on Monday and the first of the pair is still on the needles today. Not a big deal, but it does feel a bit like my craft things are mostly treading water.

Norma might be proud of me though. I have started some broccoli seeds and will be starting most of the rest this weekend. My gardening experience in New England was sad, mostly given my overly shaded back yard. Hopefully I will have more success here. Heck, I certainly have a longer growing season!

[10 Tuesday] the world is coming up babies

Between my brother and some of my friends, it feels like the world has exploded with new babies. Q is only 21 weeks old, so the newness hasn't worn off of the experience. While things have calmed down a bit as I've learned the important job of being a parent, some things are still a bit more exciting than I was expecting. Of course, this week's prompt for 10 for Tuesday doesn't really have anything to do with parenting, knitting or knowing that there are new babies in the world. It's OK. The world is a wonderful place.

1. I feel happy. It's such a simple feeling and so easy to miss, but I get conversation (both at work and at home) and get to top those off with the best things in the world: baby hugs.

2. I feel overwhelmed. Not as much the parenting thing, though it is easy to borrow trouble for what might be issues in the future. I still want to knit and cook fun things and balancing those with baby care, dishes and the omnipresent laundry means that a lot of my normal fun things are just falling through the cracks. Not exactly a problem, but something I'm a little more aware of now than I was even a month ago.

3. I feel glad to do our taxes. Of course, this is mostly because my interaction with the taxes this year has been answering questions via email while my husband wrangles the tax software. And, well, the idea of a refund is always nice.

4. I feel like a member of a community. We've joined the local UU church. It's not something we would have necessarily done in Boston. Not because it was something we were completely uninclined to do, but we didn't drive and it was just inconvenient. I'm part of the choir, so I get out of the house once a week for music.

5. I feel grateful that I have friends here. We are all sharing the load. Watching the kids as a group makes the load easier for all.

6. I feel that motherhood (well, specifically breastfeeding motherhood) is teaching me to love water. I went from drinking a coffee and a soda each day and if I was lucky adding in a cup or two of water to averaging 10 cups of water a day. If I don't drink that much I'm very dry.

7. I feel like Lexington needs to learn how to deal with snow better. I know that this winter has been pretty unusual with the amount of snow and that normally around here the snow would just melt a day or two later, but the amount of snow days that my friends' kids have had is astounding and seems to be irritating everybody but the kids. Go figure.

8. I feel that this might be the first year where I manage to have a reasonable garden. My husband got a book from a Kickstarter that actually has a lot of the same information I remember from my mom's copy of Carrots Love Tomatoes (I don't want to think about how long ago I read that book). We're starting small. I have actually started some broccoli seeds, and in about 2 weeks I get to start the hot peppers and tomatoes. I'm hoping to actually have more than the 5 bell peppers and two tomatoes I managed to grow in Massachusetts in the past 4 years. Yeah, my yard was very shady...

9. I feel glad that I have Friday off. It's because of needed basement repairs, but it will still be nice to have a bit of a break. Heck, I might even make something!

10. I feel like I need more driving practice. I'm using a learner's permit. I need to practice, practice, practice if there is a chance that I might get my license in March (though I think my 180 days ends in May). Maybe we can do some of that also on Friday. 

AKC - Hat!

Today is 10 for Tuesday, and while I do have 10 items that make me feel like a grown up (and I might pepper them in here), I really wanted to share a hat.

My best friend has two children, and I wasn't quite as much into knitting when they were born. Part of me feels bad that I didn't make them a cross-stitch project or knit something, but I was just getting into knitting and cross-stitch can take nearly forever. Now, more of my friends are having children, and many of them are getting knitted gifts. Last year it was a sweater set that did not fit longer than a sneeze and a baby blanket.

Baby blankets are my new go to project, because they don't need to be a specific size to be useful. However, one of our friends is having a girl and her "Internet name" is a bit Viking. Thus the hat.

I made this pattern (well, the boy version of it) years ago, before I was active on Ravelry. This time I made the girl version and, well, made the hair red for the red-headed step child of it all. Q was a terrific model!

I made the one year size and used Cascade Pacific in white, gray and orange. I used scrap yarn from a partial skein to make the ties at the ends of the braids.

My husband mailed the hat on Tuesday for the shower, because we just couldn't justify a long trek to Boston, and it was apparently one of the hits of the shower.

So, the pattern is Viking Girl Hat by Sarah Fama, and this is the second time I have bought the pattern (I couldn't find my original purchase or the file). The pattern is great because it includes two separate variants and sizes from newborn to adult. 

However, the pattern sadly references a few things, like embroidery, which are not shown in the pattern. The designer also did not indicate the best way to affix the wings and braids to the hat and just said to sew them on.

I sewed the braids on at the top of the bobble section. The wings I sewed along the front edge and top of the stockinette sections, so the wings would be able to flair out.

And my 10/Tuesday?

1. Seeing my friends build families makes me feel like we are all collectively moving into adulthood.

2. Paying bills, always.

3. Caring for our little boy.

4. Doing things I don't like on a daily basis. Right now, that is the dishes, at least once a day.

5. The day job as much as I love it makes me feel like a grown up.

6. Menu planning. Definitely this, because it is so much more grown up then scavenging from the freezer.

7. My coffee habit. It is bad enough that I need to find time to make more coffee concentrate, so I can save a few pennies making my own.

8. Learning to drive. 

9. Owning a house and all of the requisite maintenance that entails.

10. Having friends scattered all over the place, because it makes getting together and maintaining ties more of an exercise in being thoughtful and taking time in a way that didn't feel as true when we were so close together.

 

Sprite art!

My husband is a king of myphotostitch.com. This is the third or fourth item that he has made in the past month or two for me to stitch. He pulls them together using sprite art.

This name badge is supposed to be the logo for the church we've been going to (UU, the church for atheists, agnostics, pantheists, monotheists and other forms of theists), but his version uses the apple from PacMan and the font from Final Fantasy (I think IV, but I don't remember).

It only took a couple of days to stitch, and the perforated paper was a breeze to work with. While it isn't my first finished item of 2014, because, well, gift crafting always takes longer to make it on the blog, it is nice to have a quickie project to share.

I hope my next cross-stitch finish is the bit of sprite art that he put together for a onesie for Q, though I do have other sprite art projects I'd like to do (a phone case and this huge project) it is the only one that needs to be done by a certain date. 

Of course, I think the onesie is 18 month size, so I do have a bit of flexibility in getting it done.

In knitting news, I am doing 14 in 2014. 14 pairs of socks that is. I'm hoping to finish a pair of socks that I started last year as my first pair by the end of the month, though at that rate I'm only going to get 12 done. Finishing anything though at this point is a major win!

[10 Tuesday] 10 Favorite Moments

2013 was a busy year. I relocated with my family halfway cross the country. We sold a house and bought a new one. Our family increased in size, and my job changed. I knit a lot of things and got back into cross-stitch, and learned card weaving (though I still haven't bought the card weaving loom... and I should because it was a lot of fun). Picking 10 moments seems almost impossible, but there is a constant thread throughout the best times. Click to see the pictures all big.

1. Q was born near the end of the year. The labor was relatively quick and with the power of modern medicine even relatively painless.

Induction at 5 a.m. and a baby at 3 p.m. same day. 

The common wisdom is that having a baby changes you. As trite as it is, it's true and it is true every day.

 

2. Being a new parent is exhausting, but well worth the effort. 

Here Q is sporting my Ishbel as a baby blanket while being nestled in the nursing pillow. The days of fitting within the curve of the nursing pillow were quickly over.

I didn't really finish much other than feeding Q in the first weeks. I didn't want to move when he was cuddled up to me. Baby hugs really might be the best thing in the world (not that little kitty licks and purrs aren't awesome too).

3. Babies learn and grow every day, and Q is no exception. It wasn't long before he was grabbing at things and exploring the world around him. It is amazing what you can learn before you can scoot, roll over or crawl.

I had a bit of a learning moment when Q was first learning to grab. I was knitting over him. He was conked out on my lap, and then he woke up and grabbed at the yarn. Lesson learned. Now I can still knit while carrying him, but he needs to be propped against my chest so the yarn isn't passing into his field of view. I expect that will change in a month or so as well.

4. This baby hat was the first project I finished after Q was born. I went with my mom when she was visiting to ReBelle and I got a single skein of Koigu. It took a little longer to knit than normal, but not by much. 

Here Q is also sporting my Spectra in progress, using a skein of Toil and Trouble yarn in Snapdragon and a skein of the SWTC sock yarn (the stuff with chitin or something else weird in it) in green. I call it my watermelon tourmaline Spectra, because the colors make me think of the state gemstone of Maine.

5. Q got so much bigger from week to week that some of the newborn pictures feel almost foreign. He has big flat feet, but my long grippy toes. It's nice to know he has something from me other than an almost perpetual skeptical expression.

Now, obviously this is the all baby network, but I still managed to get some knitting and other craft things worked on. Many of them aren't completed, because I have an intense problem with startitis. Whoops. Other items are gifts, and cannot be shown yet.

I remember doing a rotation back when cross-stitch was my primary craft, and I felt like I got so much done. I have tried adding that back to my arsenal, but for some reason it just doesn't feel like it works quite as well for knitting or multi-craft mode. Probably because some crafts are just so fast (knitting, weaving) that it makes it hard to downshift to the slower crafts. 

My memories around this time include being grateful that there were two of us home, and that the stash of food in the freezer was a great idea.

6. Mr. Ice C. Scoops arrived this week (week 6). A gift for me and Q from me, it was one of the last items I bought in Boston. Mr. Scoops was made by Jen @ Zooguu for the shop window at Gather Here. I knew I was going to miss my friends from the shop and the nearly weekly craft nights (and brunches), so I wanted something to help remember.

Well, that and I didn't manage to snag a yeti from one of their previous shop windows.

Given how much I love ice cream, both to make and eat, this was a perfect fit. 

7. Q isn't really allowed to watch television per se, but it was fun watching him man the remote.

Also, cue the skeptical expression again.

One of the flaws with maternity leave (I'll let my husband speak if he wishes about paternity leave) is that caring for a baby at this stage involves a lot of sitting around. And in my world that meant a lot of time on the iPad or a lot of time watching television. There were days I could feel my brain rotting, though it is getting better now that we're limiting our television watching.

This is also about when I realized that I wasn't going to be doing the half marathon in March. It wasn't a lack of time for exercise as much as a lack of appropriate clothing to exercise in. But 2015 I hope to be back in action. It's something I've missed.

8. The chair was a gift from coworkers and is awesome. Q doesn't have quite enough sit up to use it yet, but when he is in it he often is sporting his grumpy old man look. Not his fault that the Patriots were giving one of those games. You know, the ones that the Red Sox often give, where you are wondering the entire time if they are going to be able to pull it together and get it done.

Yeah. Those  games.

I looked like that much of the game too.

9. Just after Thanksgiving Q was 2 months old. The time had passed so quickly and I was starting to look the end of my leave in the face (and occasionally with unattractive blind panic).

The play mat became a favorite place. A spot where he could (and can) grab things. 

No photographs, but at this point he could still wear the Newborn Vertebrae that I made for him to wear, though the booties and hat I made to go with it were a bust from the get go.

Thanksgiving was my first lesson in how much cooking I can really do. I made many desserts for our multi-family feast, but it was a lot harder to make anything that took more than 30 minutes or so. The best dessert might have been the apple cider caramels from Smitten Kitchen (I also made a version using pomegranate juice), though the different batches of fudge were also pretty good.

10. A well baby!

Doctor visits are a pretty regular occurrence, but this was the first one that involved vaccinations where we were there (we didn't have to watch the vaccinations in the hospital). Sometimes I think the experience is harder on the parents, because Q cried but was quickly soothed. Something that took a bit longer for the two of us to get over.

That said, I'm still glad he got them. Less getting sick for us!

All in all, 2013 was a very baby focused year. I was pregnant (and thus thinking about baby things) for the first 3/4 of the year and then all of a sudden Q was here and my life changed. And it is all wonderful.

Also, I promise knitting or other craft content in the next post.

Santa Baby...

Q is just a tiny bit skeptical, isn't he.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday. With the holiday in the middle of the week, it feels strangely brief. I am just used to the holiday falling closer to the weekend, and getting a long weekend out of it. I'm sure that once Q is older (much older) we will take more of the week off to facilitate travel or fun day trips in the area.

Yesterday was knitting light, but I did get the minimum number of rows I have been trying to get done each day. I am hoping to eek out a bit more time, so I can finish something before the new year. I always like being able to mark something as done. It's the illusion of a clean slate, because I always have a ton of other projects that I have set aside that should be worked on instead.

This year was the year of the beverage. I got a bottle of Moxie, some Grumpy Cat beverages, and hot chocolate. Awesome and hopefully delicious!

For Q, this was the year of the book. Growing up, I remember reading the Fairy Tale Tree. It was a huge (and still is) collection of stories. So, when I was thinking about Q's first Christmas, I thought of this book. I was able to find it online (thank you, bookfinder.com) for a price not too dear and in good condition. Now he has a little piece of my childhood that hopefully he will treasure as much as I did.

The best present we got this year was Q in our lives.

Warning: get off the road

Picture from November. He is bigger now.

So, this is the face of somebody knowing his mom is learning to drive. Yeah. Kind of grumpy and skeptical. Concerned even.

I passed my permit test a little over a week ago and had my first drive around the parking lot this past weekend. I would say that it was an OK trip around (and around and around) the parking lot, but I am by no means confident at driving down a street with more than two cars on it. Even if those cars are just parked on the sides of the road.

People always seem so surprised that I don't already know how to drive. I grew up in southern Maine, which doesn't make the lack of driving any more understandable, but I've always been a walker. Five miles? Walking distance. 15+ miles, still walking distance as long as I don't need to be there by a certain time. I lived in the Boston area for the longest time where actually owning a car can be a detriment and there is plenty of public transportation. Kentucky, however, isn't so great in the public transit side of the ledger. So, I'm finally learning to drive at nearly 40!

Fear for your lives people. I'm hitting the road.

The last Friday

Today is the last Friday of my maternity leave. It is a bittersweet feeling to be going back to work even though I love my job. This feeling makes it much more understandable why some people drop out of the workforce. It isn't just because taking care of your baby at home is more affordable if your job doesn't cover daycare expenses. Sometimes you just cannot imagine being away.

The holidays are upon us. I have cookies to make (just for us, because I didn't manage to scrape together the time to make enough cookies for Christmas packages), a cake and a trifle between now and Christmas morning. I have knitting to do, which feels awesome even if the next step is picking up 109 stitches. However, instead of doing any of these things I am enjoying a quiet moment with the guys in my life taking twin naps on the couch. A joy on this (nearly) winter day.

Happy Holidays!