If It Ain't One Thing...

A Story (mostly) in Pictures, by Cher

Today was a typical PDX summer day. Beautiful cloudless sky:


I worked on some secret work knitting:


Picked up the hub at his office:


Envied the lovely brick courtyard space where said office is located:


Picked up the kids from camp:


And came home to find gobs of blood on the laundry room floor and a small dog with what appeared to be a massive head wound.

Once we cleaned him up, it turned out that the Tomster most likely scratched open one of his many moles on the wooden fence. Boy-O gave him a bath and a haircut (thank the gods - the dog was unspeakably foul), and we tried to figure out how best to stop him from pawing at his head until we can get him to the vet tomorrow.

So, one sacrificed map of Salinas, CA later....


A saltier dog was ne'er seen in this house, that's for sure.

The Most Beautiful Girl In the World

Presenting my gorgeous niece - the divine Miss K.
Born 7/1/07, a very healthy 7+ lbs.

"Oh, we're halfway there..."

(I just loved the band Bon Jovi. Ok, ok -- really I loved Richie Sambora, but then he turned out to be all tacky and slutty in the end... too bad.)

At any rate, we have reached the (theoretical) halfway point in our pregnancy!
If it lasts the expected 40 weeks, the little one should show up in early December. Whoo!

So far, so good. I mostly feel fine (though I still have bouts of morning sickness - ugh!), and have lost a little bit of weight, which I attribute to chasing after the kiddos and our tendency to take mile-long walks with them.
My Doc isn't worried, so neither am I. As she says, babies tend to take what they need, and you can't force-feed yourself. Staying hydrated is the most important thing, and that's not been a problem.

The in-laws are in town to celebrate the Boy-O's birthday, and we have had a blast. They generously offered to baby-sit so that my husband and I could have an actual date.
(I won't mention that the hot date in question started with a big ol' nap!)

In knitting news, the weather's been completely wet for the last few days, and I want to be knitting again. Though I have several projects in the works, all of them are boring me right now, and I'm dying to work something for the Bean. So I started swatching for this blanket:


It's from Vogue Knitting on the Go Baby Blankets, which I guess from the price on Amazon is out of print. The little blips of texture are sheep! Hee. So cute.

My kid must have the most tense mama in the world: I'm using Swish DK (Shameless work-related plug: New! Lighter weight! Just as soft!) but am consistently getting 6 sts/in. Sigh.
Perhaps I need to take relaxation lessons from Xena.
(Yes, that's me and my giant preggo bosom in the picture.)

Now, for a garment, I'd wash and block my swatch so that I'd know the gauge for sure -- gauge tends to change once you've treated the swatch the way you plan to treat the actual item --
but I'm just not prepared to be so uptight about something that's likely to be covered in spit up and breastmilk. So Uptight Mama is going to switch needle size and go with the flow.
We'll see what happens. Hopefully this cool-ish weather will stick around long enough to encourage some actual progress!

Knitting...Really!

Though most of my time these days is spent like this:


I am occasionally, grudgingly, allowed to do a smidgeon of this:

I take the absolute worst pictures of yarn - I have no idea why.
(If I ask the Boy-O, he'll tell me - in detail. Problem is, the explanation always starts off in English, but ends up in Photographer, and I am Not a Photographer.)

Anyway, this little snippet is a swatch I'm working on in Andean Silk for the October catalog. I can't give any details, but I'm pretty excited about creating a piece in this lovely, soft yarn.
But I can tell you that the Lantern Moon needles I'm using are beyond fabulous. Smooth and gorgeous - they'd be perfect for silk or other slippery yarns.
I highly recommend that you go & get yourself some!

Dipping a toe into the waters

Goodness! No one ever mentioned how hard this parenting stuff could be. We're okay, to be sure, but the level of intensity with two kids, close in age, (and the insufficiency of a two bedroom house to contain said intensity) is a whole world we knew nothing about. I cannot imagine how people do it without going crazy. (Fortunately, we are halfway to nuts already, so we haven't much sanity to miss.)

Add to that a project at work that I need to get done ASAP, the strangeness of the pregnant belly (how weird is it that I'm developing an outie? Seriously, that's freaky) and I'm more than a little beside myself. I look forward to bedtime with a seriousness that frightens me.

But there is knitting. And new yarns to talk about very soon, I promise. Shiny new colors and one brand new line, which always make me squee a little bit.
More later. Right now, a speedy supper, bath time and story time are in the cards.