So, for about the last three months I've been freezing cold...then over the past two days I've become seriously HOT!!! hot hot hot!
I expected the hot...I never expected the cold.... I gotta say...the cold was easier to deal with...hahaha....
I don't care....I'm just so happy to be pregnant!

I got my first order of diapers in the mail today!!!


I got 4 packs (so 24 total) newborn sized prefold diapers
3 newborn size super brite covers (the little white ones)
3 small size super brite covers (yellow, green, blue)
1 medium size super brite cover (blue)
3 snappi fasteners

I was so excited about the diapers that I forgot that I need some special laundry soap for cloth diapers..... I guess the regular stuff can leave residue or something.

I can't wait to start knitting woolie covers :-) I hope I get some knitting mojo...because I have a whole lot of knitting to do.... (and a pretty big stash of yarn...all except the right wool for diaper covers of course...tee hee)

Woo hoo baby!

Well, it seems I've been away for a very long time. Truth is 3 days after my last post I found out I was pregnant on my hubby's birthday. He said it was the best birthday present he'd ever received! ...but I also then sort of hibernated for the next 3 months just willing it to go by quickly.
We've had some struggles along the way, and so it's been a scary ride so far, but everything looks great now. I'm at that point of "OK to tell" woo hoo.
Here's a picture of our perfect little one. I'm so curious to know if we're having a he or a she!
I'm so crazy. I've already started researching cloth diapers like made and even placed an order for some a week ago...they should arrive on Wednesday and I'm so impatient that I want them now!!!! Even though we won't need them until late May or early June.
So, I've got a couple of projects that I must finish before I can start knitting baby things....and it's driving me crazy..haha...but it's great motivation to actually complete things! Then I'm going to try to make some diaper cover soaker thingies...I've never made any before, so I hope I can do it...then there are blankets and sweaters and baby socks and hats and etc etc etc....tee hee My ravelry queue is going to be ridiculous!

One warm puppy

I finally knit something. It's one of the fastest projects ever...but it still took me forever to knit. I find since we got the puppies there has not been much time for anything else. I do very little knitting, not much stamping, ha...not much laundry or housecleaning either (unless you count cleaning up after puppies).
So, I made sweet Mindy a coat for winter...she hates it! yes...hates it...not much thanks there, but I imagine when she's freezing her little heiny off outside this winter she'll like it a lot more :-)

Poor Myah probably won't get a coat like this. The pattern was nice enough, clear and easy to knit, quick even, but I'm just not very good at repeating patterns. Even making mittens is a struggle for me because I'm so bored by the end of anything. No matter what it is...I'm bored and uninterested by the time I'm 1/2 done. With the exception of the Cross Country Chullo I knit a couple of winters ago. That thing had me humming the whole way...I was shocked...then again, I was listening to Twilight the whole time I knit it, and I spend about 4 hours in a chair everynight doing nothing but listening and knitting. I don't think the puppies would let me do that!

Anyways...I suppose I'd better find another pattern to make for Myah...but I think I'll wait awhile...I'm done with puppy coats for a while....see....as I write this...I'm not even actually done..I have one leg opening to pick up stitches on and knit a garter stitch border, and then ends to weave in...but I'm writing this post anyways as if I'm already finished (so bored...ha!)

Anyways, I've given myself permission to not worry about it when I don't blog for months....I've come to terms with being a periodic blogger....I probably always will be....why stress about it. I think about blogging quite a bit..but just never seem to get around to writing the posts...
I'm still reading though...and love to see what everyone else is up to :-)

Oh My Puppies!

We got puppies! I can't believe it, after years of wanting a puppy Harold actually agreed. So we went puppy shopping...and guess what we came home with. Not just one puppy but two puppies! Harold the big softy just couldn't leave one of these little girls behind.

This first picture is Mindy. She's a quiet girl, so very sweet, and a bit timid.
This is Myah, she is a firecracker....nuff said!
Well, I have much more to update you on....mostly puppy stuff...but right now...I've got to go help hubby set up our new tent in the back yard to check it out!

It's been a pretty good...tiring but good...day :-)

Glad to read you had a great time Jennifer :-) We'll chat soon! I was so glad to see you posted...I had to write one myself ;p

Debbie

Walk for MS

Every year a number of people in my family to the Walk for Multiple Sclerosis. A number of people in my family HAVE multiple sclerosis (MS). When I was in grad school my project was related to MS.
This year my 11 year old niece Brooklynn is going to do the walk for the first time with my sister Kim.

If anyone would like to sponsor Brooklynn and Kim here is a link to their sponsor page.

Every little bit counts and I know how much it would encourage them to be able to raise a little bit more money than they expected. (Plus, I made my sister...who's not all that "into" computers go onto the website and figure out how to set herself up so I could sponsor her online.... I think she had trouble...so ummmm please...help me reward her a little bit... LOL)

My sweetums got me flowers!

My sweetums brought home daffodils for me the other day. I managed to snap a picture (or 20 :-)
He's brought me flowers once before...and I was so darned shocked I forgot to take a picture...I've been pretty sad about that ever since....I'm not much for drying flowers, I don't like how the end up dying twice, once in the vase because I dry them, then again because they get so covered in dust that you eventually have to toss them anyways....I prefer to just enjoy them fully while they're here, and completely beautiful...I like to take a picture, because to me drying just doesn't keep all the beauty....but then again...I'm a weird one sometimes so maybe that's just me.

I finally have a finished object to show. I've been floating around between multiple WIPs one of them is even crochet! Gasp! I know...I haven't felt like crocheting in years...but now I'm crocheting a wee bit, and even taught a friend who I thought might take to that better than knitting....she did...and now she is totally excited about amigurumi! Excellent!
It's this little guy that I finished up. He's been knit for a couple of months, it was just the sewing that I had to finish, honestly it took about 20 minutes this morning...how lazy am I!
He's cute though, I'm happy with him. The pattern is available on Ravelry it's called "Flower Power Elephants" I too lazy to link it....but I'm sure you'll find it in a search. It's well written IMO and simple to follow, quick to knit, but a little fiddly.... This guy is pretty tiny (which I wanted) 7 1/2 inched from snout to rump and about 3 1/2 inches tall.
This little guy needs a name, he's currently just called "neon elephant for baby Jared"Jared is the 4 month old baby boy of a friend of mine who I hold dear to my heart (both parents and baby Jared)..hmmmm should that have been "whom I hold" great....I don't even have a good grasp on my own native language...what can ya do!

I'm making this!

http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2006/02/second-helpingsturkey-barley-soup.html

I love making turkey barley soup...but I never...never make it exactly the same way twice...and I've always just sort of thrown things in till it tastes good :-)
So...I thought I'd check online for a recipe and see if I could improve...or at least get more consistent results...yummmm..... This is sooooooo close to what I already do...except for the poultry seasoning...my soup has randon herbs and spices thrown in...
oh and I've never cooked any of the veggies before except for the onion...

I'll let you know how it turns out :-D

Guide me oh leather master

OK. So I went for coffee with friend tonight...then we went to Giant Tiger, and to Talize (I'd never been to Talize before). At Giant tiger I think I totally scored...H and I still don't have curtains on the dining room patio door...so our main living area is sort of like living in a fish bowl when it gets dark, and there is a walking path that runs just behind our fence...it's a little creepy. We were given some money for Christmas and I wanted to buy curtains, but seriously curtains are EXPENSIVE! Guess what I found at the GT boutique....curtains...for about 1/2 the price of the ones I was about to give in and order from Sears. They're not exactly what I was looking for..the have a back tab top, instead of grommets, and they're ivory faux suede instead of white something or other....but they're so close and I think they'll work great!

So then at Talize I looked for some leather. I can't believe how much I had to choose from! It's incredible! I picked up too large mens coats. They are both in great shape, I will almost be sad to cut them up. The first is suede, the second is leather. Have a look.......lot's of leather yardage in these two!
I love LOVE the colour and the intersting seams in this one, it's hard to see in the picture, but there are neato little seam lines running vertically on the front...and on the back.
See, lot's o' yardage....
And now...if I actually get over the fear of cutting and sewing leather, maybe I'll make that book cover...... oh leather master..... teach me your ways :-) Actually....can I just mail you the leather...and you can put it together for me :-P

Help me decide (assuming I'll get as far as casting on)

In case you feel like voting....I think I need another big warm cozy sweater...since I have one that fits this description...and I wear it at home constantly...maybe it needs a buddy to take the pressure off of it.

Soooooo..I did a quick browse through for patterns for a big comfy sweater/jacket type wintery warm thing to knit. They are all ravelry links... Let me know if you take a look..which are your favs.

My criteria are: fat yarn, big needles, fast knit, cozy, collar or something cozy right up to the neck, comfortable so not too form fitting, but not so sloppy that I have to take it off to do things (know what I mean). warm, so even the ones with a tie front I'd probably alter so that they closed all the way down.

thick-knit-car-coat

109-19-jacket-in-symphony

petra

sedum

one-more-notch

77-vine-lace-top-down-cardigan

Hmmmm, I'm also open to any other suggestions you might have :-)

MMM comfort soup and knitting

I have been doing some knitting...steadily actually on one thing!
The first picture here is my swatch..so you can actually see the stitch pattern...it's very simple but makes a nice little detail.
And this is how much I've got done. There is a long way to go...but lot's of relaxing over the holidays gave me a pretty good start. It's to be a tank top...a rather big one with room for expansion...I'm thinking ahead here, it's for some reason encouraging to me to be knitting this.
Pattern: Anjou sleeveless top (ravelry link).
This morning/afternoon I made a nice warm comforting soup. We got one of those spiral hams on sale after Christmas, so I saved the bone and some of the meat. I've never made a ham soup before (never have I bought one of those hams before either). I did some internet searching and found a recipe to loosely follow.... but I changed most of it based on my likes and availability of ingredients.Potatoes, green onions, carrots.... some spices (celery salt because I had no celery)Quite a bit of left over ham....I like lot's of meat in soups.It's a very thick soup...lot's of stuff in it...just the way I like it. I actually made it a cream soup...but the picture of that just looked like, well, cream, so I showed this one...before making it creamy....
Yumm!
I'm even eating the carrots instead of picking them out ...hehe

Lucky Year!

I won a guessing contest over at The Tangled Arts a couple of weeks ago (seriously...I won something...and more than once this year! I'm really not usually someone who ever wins! ...but on to my yarn!)

Trish knit a beautiful blanket for her daughter (the kind that I've drooled over for a while..so I tried to make a simple dishcloth in a similar type of pattern, but I messed it up...and frogged it...anyways...back to my new yarn)

The contest was to guess how many ends Trish had to weave in when she finished that blanket...and I won! So, here's what she sent me:
See that...it's Lime & Violet Sasquatch sock yarn and the colourway is "Midnight in the garden of loopy". Hehe, and look...the skein is all loopy :-) It makes me giggle....I love that name.
I suck at taking pictures that actually look like the object I'm taking pictures of...but I think this one maybe shows the colour a bit better.....it's probably actually somewhere between the dark and light pictures... I love it I love it!It's really fueling my recently found love for sock yarn, and staring at it, squishing it, spending far too much time on Ravelry deciding what pattern I should knit out of it. Oh, how I love the yarn.

Thank you Trish! You rock!

Oh, and seriously...she just posted her knits of 2008...man...I aspire....to knit even half...heck..who am I kidding, if I finished a quarter of that knitting I'd think I'd done pretty awesome!

Bad blogger...

I am a very spurty blogger aren't I. No posts, no posts, no posts, then 6 posts, then no posts, no posts, no posts.... so inconsistent. I'd make a resolution not to do that...but it would just make me feel bad when I don't keep up...so...it is what it is...I am what I am...a bad..and spurty blogger. Sorry :-)

So, since I'm so spurty I have a few things to show you....I'll move from most recent, and move backwards through time. Here is H in his new very VERY thick hat. His last hat was knit in a cotton blend, because he didn't want it to be too warm. He said his head gets too hot in most hats, but too cold without one. It serves it's purpose for the not so frigid days when he doesn't have to be out for too long, but now since his building moved he has about a 10-15minute walk outside to his office from our parking lot and his head gets tooooo cold. So, I grabbed some lion brand wool ease thick and quick and found a quick pattern on ravelry called Brangelina. He doesn't like the name because he thought it was girlie...but I convinced his it's a perfectly acceptable man hat.I have his full permission to post these pics because he actually likes how he looks in these pictures...which is really very unusual for him...he rarely likes pictures of himself. I glad he likes these ones...I do too :-)

I started this scarf a bit before Christmas on a whim. I think if I eventually finish it I'll give it to H's father. It's a really nice and very simple pattern. I've already recommended it to a couple of newer knitters one who was struggling with a plain ribbed scarf and getting discouraged because she saw no progress....I hear she's liking this pattern much better. I guess I'm not the only one who finds ribbing so tedious I want to poke a needle into my eye.
Oh, and I can't believe I forgot to blog the mitered mitts when they were finished. This is such a great pattern. The more I knit the more I appreciate the ingenuity of Elizabeth Zimmerman. I must admit that when I first saw much of her stuff I thought it was all frumpy and old fashioned (gasp! I know....I said it outloud too!), but now I see much of it as classic, or if not classic, then a lesson in how to make it classic or change it to your own design based on techniques that you learn from following her. These mittens though...I think they are just classic and elegant. I love them...I picture them in black or white and a very fine weight yarn going all the way up your arms with an elegant evening gown (I guess you'd want fingers then though huh?), but these are just normal toasty warm wool mitts.

Merry Christmas

I've not sent out a single Christmas card. Yes, I made a stack of them, but no, they didn't get done and mailed :-( I even have a couple of treats that I was going to have mailed out to a few of you on time for Christmas, but that hasn't happened either...hopefully in January....but I think the actual Christmas cards will wait until next year.
I haven't even mailed my Aunt's socks...although they've been done forever! They've not made it into the mail. Mostly because I have to actually go to the post office to mail them (get them weighed and all that jazz) and I've just been too tired and lazy! I'm positively terrible!
Sooo,

Merry Christmas everybody!

Happy Birthday Jennifer!!!

Go visit this very cool chick and tell her happy birthday!

Happy Birthday Jennifer....I hope you've had a blast!

Mitered Mitts!

As promised....here's a little glimpse of my mitered mitts!I have the second mitten almost to the point where I stop the increases and just work my way down to the end. I haven't done the thumb yet...and I gotta tell ya, I'm a wee bit nervous about it.These are a gift for my secret sister, and the secret sister reveal party is tomorrow night! EEK!
I hope I get them done.
I really love this pattern, I think I will end up making it again (maybe even for me). I would recommend it to anyone looking for an easy, but almost elegant looking mitten. The girls at work are all quite impressed and "elegant" was their way of describing them. So, hopefully I'm able to do this afterthought thumb and not ruin them :-)

Oh, yes, that is a knitpicks harmony wood interchangeable needle I'm using for magic loop. It's the only one I have. I actually bought the tips and cable to use for Harolds sweater..hehehe...poor chilly Harold.

I LOVE these needles, they feel nice like bamboo, but they're a little bit "faster" because they're so smooth. The points are perfect for me, long and tapered, and sharp...but blunt at the very very tip so I don't end up with a sore finger from pushing the needles (subconscious habit I'm trying to break). Oh, and the price is right, considering each of my bamboo circulars is $13 and I have some in 2 different lengths. I could have the whole set of harmony wood needles for $69 ...US funds...ugggg...which totally sucks right now when buying anything in US funds...the Canadian dollar is soooooooo low, but still they're worth it!

OK I'd better go knit!

Socks that count!

Toe up Mockery socks. Toes from Bayerische.
With a short row heel from "Simple socks: Plain and Fancy" which I bought as soon as I realized she explained short row heels and toes so that even I could do them without big holes! And an elastic bind off.

I finished the second sock…this one was much faster! The elastic bind off on this one isn’t as nice and loose as the first though :-( Hoping it will be loose enough for Aunt Mary, it’s OK for me.

Yeah! Socks that count: 1 pair (I've made others before, but they were fat yarn on bigger needles) So this is the first pair for my official sock count. I think I'll be making more...but first some Christmas knitting. I'm about to cast on for some mitered mitts!My first tiny needle skinny yarn socks!

Hmmmm, don't zoom in too close on the first picture...you might end up finding some stray leg hair :-P
Ha!...I'm gross

Snow, Snow, SNOW!

I have no snow pictures, because I'm not going outside....BUT I might actually get to use our new fireplace :-) and for that I'm kindof excited.

I've had a few weeks of migraines, but yesterday topped them all. I think it was because of the snow, rain always gets me, but I hadn't considered snow before, so now I realize that's probably why winters are so bad for me....Hmmm, maybe I'll move closer to Wool Winder. Looks nice there doesn't it!

I haven't really made any progress on the socks, but I did finish my blanket square (so we have enough squares for our Christmas blanket, I casted on a tomten jacket, knit about four rows, and decided that I didn't like something, either the needles or the yarn, not sure which, but that's the end of that. I also casted on another baby bib o'love, because I wanted to knit, but needed some plain old garter stitch. Sooo, no work on the sock :-(

Here is a picture of the baby kimono finally finished and gifted at the baby shower. I finally finished sewing it up. I finished the knitting around September, but the sewing up didn't happen until Wednesday night...because the baby shower was on Thursday!
Instead of ribbons I opted for just a crocheted tie, because some moms have told me that the ribbons get caught on velcro in the washer and end up ruined. I hope this looks OK. Sarah seemed happy with it, but I also got her a one hour massage, so I think she was drunk on the idea of someone rubbing down all her sore spots..hehe....

Which house are you from?

Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?

Your in-depth results are:

Gryffindor - 14
Ravenclaw - 12
Hufflepuff - 11
Slytherin - 7

After reading Jennifer's post...I just had to find a quiz!

SNOW!

It started snowing yesterday. I really didn't think it would be snow that stayed...but when we woke up this morning...here's what we saw:Over on the left....those smooshed things are the cages for over my garden boxes...I'll be really sad it I can't bend the wire back to shape...because they were a royal pain in the sitter to make!
They were supposed to be in the garage already...but we've been cleaning and organizing, so didn't really have a place for them yet...oops
More snow
Oh, and here's where my sock is at.... it is hard to take pictures of your own feet yes/no? Anybody have a fancy nice way to do this? Anyways...I can't believe how long it's taking me to knit this sock! LOL

Things to knit...or finish knitting

Warning...most of these are Ravelry links....

1. Socks for my secret recipient (the purple ones I'm working on now...) they're doing quite well I think. The first one is about 30 rows from finished.
2. Seam up the baby kimono, because it is a shower gift for a friend...it's been finished for a while... just not sewn up...I'm weird
3. Blanket square for the knit night blanket project (I have only one half done..because I decided to be fancy and do a ball band blanket square instead of plain knitting...and well honestly the sock it taking all my attention)
4. Harold's sweater, I ripped it all out, and casted on again...but...I only have about 1 inch knit...it's lost its intrigue since I had to rip :-( poor chilly sweetums with no sweater to warm him
5. Harold needs a new hat too...the one I made him last year has too much cotton (requested because he's bald and wanted soft) anyways...it's perfect out of the dryer...but too big after a few days :-( (Totally my fault...what gauge?
6. Mitered mitts, just because I want some and Jennifer's look so cool!
7. More socks! More socks! With my fantastic sock yarn! Also, I just got my copy of "simple socks plain and fancy" So I'm ready to go!
8. Hemlock ring blanket to put away for any future possible babies
9. Cotton dishcloth blanket...made of lot's of different cool dishcloths with textured pictures on the....also for babies (because seriously...pregnant people are popping up all over the place!
   
10. Cancelli fingerless mitts with the one skein of light blue alpaca I picked up because I just had to!
    

Well, that should really keep me busy forever...since I don't actually spend nearly enough time knitting to complete much of anything! :-P