Still here! Hope do do more soon.

Daniel

A few people have stopped by and asked about the baby. He is doing great. We had a little boy named Daniel 8 months ago. Here are two pictures. The first is very recent. The second was taken when he was a couple of weeks old.

Baby knitting....

Oh, it's hard to know where to start. I wanted to make a few things for our new baby, due Nov. 13, and then....a few things happened actually. The good news is that the baby is doing great. We did go to our June appointment and were told with 99% certainty we were having a little girl. I kind of thought it was a boy when we went in, but they said, no, it was a girl. It didn't take me long to start looking forward to that little girl, buying clothes and picking out pink yarn. Then, I started to get pregnancy carpel tunnel, which has severely limited my ability to get any knitting done. My mother-in-law made a few really nice items though, in neutral colors. The carpel tunnel is improving, so I was starting to think about making a sweater set or something smaller with the yarn I'd bought. Then, on September 24th, we had another ultrasound, because I have only gained 2 pounds during the pregnancy and the doctor wanted to make sure the baby's growth was on track. At 33 weeks, we were told we were having a little boy. Anyway, I was very attached to the idea of having a little girl; we came home and packed up the girl items and did some little boy shopping. We're still very excited about the baby, but we did go through kind of a grieving process, trying to let go of our preconceptions about the baby we thought we were having. Although we're almost certain the baby is a boy (I'm not sure how they could be wrong at 33 weeks, but I don't want to be shocked again), I'll be holding off on making anything until I see the baby. By the way, the baby is said to be very healthy and is growing right on track.

My biggest project yet, coming in November!

I work in an office with 35 woman (all wonderful people that I love working with) and, as you know, are at the stage in their lives when they are having babies. I make a blanket for each of the babies that come and sometimes I fall a little behind (I love doing it, by my free time and energy do not always match up with the number of babies coming at work and church at any given time). I currently have 4 blankets to work on and a 5th friend who is expecting (I may do a sweater, hat and booties for her this time to mix things up a bit).

Anyway, the blue crocheted blanket I was talking about in my last post was really hanging me up a bit, because I had gotten a late start on it (I started after Christmas, but the baby was born in November.) I was making decent progress and suddenly found myself with zero energy or desire to work on it when I did have free time. And then, I started hating coffee, which was both perplexing to me and a sad loss to my knitting ritual. It all added up to this--I'm finally having my own baby. My husband and I are so excited; we'd almost given up. As I write this, I'm a bit over 14 weeks along. I'm starting to get some energy back and am trying hard to decide which blanket to do for our child.

We are hoping to find out the baby's gender in another 5 or 6 weeks, by which time I'm hoping that some of my other projects will be nearly finished so that I can make a few things before the baby comes.

2 Crocheted Blankes

I had so many projects going for a while that I thought I might try crocheting to help me get done a bit faster (each crocheted row is about 3/4 of an inch, whereas I have to knit about 12 rows for every two crocheted rows). I forgot to factor in that I am not a good crocheter and that I don't enjoy it as much. I am left handed, but I knit and crochet like a right handed person because I've never been able to reverse all of the instructions. I think crocheting it just too much work for my right hand. The blanket on top is for a good friend who just had her third baby. I loved both the colors and the stitch pattern, which again, I took from the Japanese Moyo book at the bottom of my blog (the tan book). Although I didn't love the crocheting, the blanket is really pretty and something I might make again. The second pattern is for someone at work who was about to have a little boy (I say about to, but by the time I got this one finished, the baby was 6 months old-I'm so ashamed!). I did it in a dark country blue, using one of the patterns from the blue Japanese pattern book (I do use other books, but I love these two books and always go there first). I was a pretty stitch, which I found kind of difficult to do consistently and probably wouldn't do it again.
We were having camera issues the day I gave away the blue blanket, so I didn't get a great picture. Hopefully this photo shows at least some of the texture.

Braided cable

I did this blanket in Caron's heather rose. It was kind of a mauve color with a nice sheen. The cable is a braided cable pattern taken directly from the Cables untangled book. There is a scarf and hat pattern in there using this braid that I used to plan out my blanket. The picture appears small, but if you click on it, you can see the detail. It makes almost a heart-shaped braid.

Finally, a red one!!

I had a friend who was having a baby boy this summer; she requested a red baby blanket. I was very happy to oblige, since I usually don't work in red (I've done lots of baby blankets lately).
This was a pattern out of one of the Debbie Macomber books. It was very easy, but very pretty. My mother said it was her favorite one so far. The color was by Caron (of course!). It was about 110 stitches across, but since I used two strands, it knit up very fast and made a good sized blanket.