Prioritizing

This last week, Abby (from the Knit Knit Cafe podcast) came to visit.

Things that got done:

We went to BJ's and had deep fried artichoke hearts (since Mom and I didn't get to go to Rhinebeck this year):

WAY better than at Rhinebeck, in case you were curious.

Abby made challah:

Do you see Venus of Willendorf? Seems apropros at the moment.

Started a new sweater:

The Rocky Coast Cardigan. 1 Million stitch markers optional.

We also saw Anthony Jeselnik live at Rooster T. Feathers. (He was better on the Charlie Sheen Roast, for the record.)

Things that did not get done finished:

From the bottom up: Blue streak cardigan, Baby wrap sweater, Logan's Sharks Cardigan

Ah, priorities.

Dessert first

When last I left you, amazing readers, you were staring at a pot of poison green, turned emerald green wool.

Apple Green Malabrigo, mmmmm!

Apple Green + Blue dye = Emerald green

Remember? Good.

I refused to be deterred by a little thing like the color not being exactly right, and instead took Judith MacKenzie's advice on overdyeing, which is to keep dyeing until you get a color you like. This is what I ended up with:

Yes, they are drying in the back of my car.

Much better. Since the skeins were still damp when we started our adventures yesterday, I set up them up to dry and utilized the back of my hatchback in a way I'm *relatively* certain the manufacturers didn't intend. Added bonus: my car smelled delightfully like wool all day.

Our adventures ended up at Purlescence, where many of our adventures end, and after socializing for a bit, one of the skeins was dry enough to wind and cast on:

This is the most color accurate photo of the yarn. Coastal Knits in the background.

It's not navy, but I LOVE it. I got my sweater started, and I'm not *quite* at the "coasting" portion (get it? COASTING!!!!) of the sweater, but I am enjoying knitting it more than it should really be legal to enjoy knitting anything.

Especially since there are three sweaters waiting in limbo for finishing touches on my dining room table. There's nothing like having dessert first.

Dyeing to start

This week we reviewed a PHENOMENAL book on the podcast- it's Coastal Knits by Alana Dakos and Hannah Fettig. They're both brilliant, and this book is - as the kids say - 100% full of win. It took real restraint for me to actually sit and record with Mom instead of just go stashdiving and start half a dozen new sweaters.

Seriously. I love all the sweaters in this book. Instead of pulling yarn for all the sweaters, I decided to start with ONE (restraint! Self-control!)- the Rocky Coast Cardigan:

Picture shamelessly stolen from Alana's blog.

There are so many things I love about this sweater- mostly that it's an open-front, drapey cardigan that I can wear regardless of how big the bump gets. It will also look great once I've lost all the baby weight and have a six-pack. (A woman can dream!)

One of the (many) great parts of Coastal Knits is that they suggest alternative yarns for each sweater. And for the Rocky Coast cardigan, Malabrigo is a suggested substitute.

I have a robust stash. I could have *sworn* that I had a bag of navy blue Malabrigo in my stash- and I'm rarely wrong about what yarn I do - or don't - have. I checked the stash, and there were other colors, just no navy blue Malabrigo. Boo. (Any bets on the navy blue turning up when I'm 90% done with this sweater?)

I went and fished the poison green (which they call "Apple Green") out of my stash, and to my utter shock and delight, this cardigan calls for *ONLY* four skeins of Malabrigo. I had four skeins, five if you counted the skein that was in a Hugo-in-Progress.

I swatched, because I've never knit Malabrigo at 4 stitches per inch- in CABLES!

Ever-so-gently blocked. Houston, we have gauge!

In the spirit of "making it work" a la Project Runway (CAUTION: noisy site), which we're FINALLY current on, guess who has two thumbs and still had 4 (or 5, if you count the one skein in my half-knit Hugo monster) skeins of poison green Malabrigo leftover from her Twist cardigan, and a dyepot? This gal.

I have faith in Hannah Fettig, but when it comes to custom colors, an extra skein is always better than trying to match it at the end. So, I ripped out my half-knit monster and told Hugo, "Sorry, this is for the good of the sweater."

I threw all five (neatly tied) skeins in some soapy water to soak, and waited.

I had to wait for Andrew to get home, because my dyeing stuff is all neatly tucked away behind some of the baby stuff we've got- but completely inaccessible to my short and round-in-front self. While he was not thrilled that I was cooking wool (instead of, you know, food), he knows better than to put a dampener on my enthusiasm. Smart man.

(He also made dinner while I was cooking wool.)

I used Mother MacKenzie's miracle dyes, because *somehow* I am completely out of any and all blue Jacquard dyes. I have enough red to dye the Nile, but blue? Nuthin'.

Just blue in the dye bath yielded these results:

Dye bath #1

Not dark enough. Not navy blue, not hunter green, not a nice teal. I decided to let the pot cool overnight, and overdye it the next day.

I got up early yesterday morning and fired up a pot of the Mother MacKenzie's worker blue and a good dose of black. Today? We have a beautiful, albeit damp, hunter green.

Now if only it would hurry up and dry so that I can cast on. Dyeing is not for the impatient.

99 days

Today, we hit 99 days to SharkBean's due date. At this point, the calendar is getting progressively busier (classes, appointments, and oh yeah, the holidays), and this whole we're-having-a-baby thing? That is getting really real.

I know. You'd think ultrasounds, the elastic-waisted pants, and the merciless kicking would have been what made it "really real", but no. SharkBean's furniture arrived this weekend (crib and dressers), and that's when it got Real.

The crib has been built. We’re calling our AMAZING electrician to install a few lights (and a dimmer switch) this week. She is officially a real person, with a real room, real furniture, and her own dimmer switch.

That's when the crazy kicked in. We're going to be parents. We're going to be 100% responsible for someone else. Everything is going to change, we just don't know how. We just know that everything is going to change.

I vacillate between being really, really excited to meet SharkBean, and being COMPLETELY terrified that we will make All of the Wrong Decisions and we'll end up on Maury Povich. Which I don't watch. (Anymore.)

We haven't been documenting The Bump as diligently as we should, but I mostly blame that on the fact that I tend to sport the Cryptkeeper look on the weekends, unless we have plans. (I'm also usually the one who takes the pictures.)

Picture one, not as the Cryptkeeper:

18 weeks, 1 day. Spike heels worn only for this photo.

A Cryptkeeper Sunday, complete with stylin' headband:

24 weeks, profile

24 weeks, from the front

The other thing I'm finding strange is the kicking. Does kicking mean she likes something, or she *doesn't* like something? USE YOUR WORDS, SHARKBEAN!

Ahem.

I'm supposed to be talking to her, but what do you discuss with a developing baby? I figure she can listen in on conversations I have with the dogs about the importance of being neighborly, discussions I have with Mom about knitting, and all of the peaceful natural birth stories I was reading out loud to Andrew from Ina May Gaskin's Guide to Natural Childbirth. (I hope if nothing else, this last one sticks with her.)

In any case, she has her whole life ahead of her for one-sided lectures. For now, I hope to provide interesting material for her to eavesdrop on.

Thought Goulash

I'm still in a wait-and-see-if-your-data-is-fully-recoverable place until Monday. There's nothing I can do about it right now, and my options are somewhat limited if it turns out that the Nice Computer People can't recover all of my stuff. Thus, agonizing over spilled milk (or a disintegrated hard drive) is pointless, n'est-ce pas?

So.

Instead, here's some Thought Goulash for you to chew on:

- I'm reading Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. I dig it so far. She has uncommonly good sense, and the calm voice she writes with is reassuring. She is like the Elizabeth Zimmermann of natural childbirth. (The knitters will know what I'm talking about.)

- The public library system has made a whole bunch of ebooks available to borrow on the Kindle. I can't tell you how excited this made me. I am reading NOTHING but utter drivel on my Kindle. (I'm finishing the "in Death" series by J.D. Robb, in case you're curious.) No War and Peace for me!

- Egg season has begun! I have gone through 30 eggs in 2 weeks. Chances are good those numbers will rise as the temperature drops. This last week alone, I baked three batches of cookies and a loaf of pumpkin bread, along with the usual egg-using suspects.

- I finally got the dogs licensed. Every time I say (or think) that, I think "Licensed to kill." That's probably not what the City of San Jose has licensed them for. I'm also not letting Elphie convince me to give her the keys to my car. Especially not after she stole half of my salami sandwich yesterday.

- I need to complete the finishing on Logan's sweater. It shouldn't take me longer to sew on the grosgrain ribbon and buttons than it took me knit the whole sweater. Longest journeys, one step, yadda yadda.

Just in time for Sharks season!

- I didn't spin enough for Andrew's sweater. I really liked spinning it the first time, but when you're spinning (roughly) another POUND to get enough yardage, it takes the wind out of your sails as a spinner. Especially when you thought you were done with the spinning and ready to start the knitting. And you only have 84 days left in 2011. And a huge husband. Of the 15 ounces extra I needed to spin, I have about 8 oz left to spin. Not bad, really.

- I'm knitting a tiny sweater for SharkBean. I'm on the finishing part of that one, too, and that's where I'm stalling out. Notice a trend?

You should see this with the ruffle. So cute!

- I've reached the "wear a headband" stage of growing my hair out. And I'm 24 weeks pregnant. Guess whose license needs renewing WITH A NEW PHOTO? According to my math, it should have required renewing LAST YEAR, you know, when I had a great hairdo in an awesome color, and I was in the best shape of my life? The universe will make it so I never have a great driver's license photo. It's a petty complaint, but seriously.

Disintegration

Dear Computer Gods;

If you help me recover all the data from my disintegrating hard drive, I promise to back up my data at least once a week. A lot has happened on my computer since January, which happens to be the last time I backed up my computer. Pretty please?

Love,

Jasmin

Taking initiative

It's Banned Books Week in the United States, and I've been reading blog post after blog post about how pointless, stupid, and oh yeah- how ANTI-AMERICAN it is. You know, if you count the first amendment.

But that's not what this post is about.

When KidBrotherSam and I were growing up, Mom kept tight control over what we watched on television. If it was violent, it was out. If it showed that being disrespectful to parents is okay, it was out. Those are the two main things I remember her censoring for- and I *totally* agree on those choices, but I'm sure there were more. (She also seriously limited how much TV we watched. Something like 3 hours total per week, and only on the weekend.)

Sam and I have always been voracious readers. I don't think it's because we didn't watch TV; I think it's because our parents were readers. What my mother never censored was our reading material. In hindsight, I remember Mom reading some of the stuff we read, and as an adult I can recognize that if Mom thought a book might have objectionable content, she would read it, too. (She never let on that was *why* she was reading our books. And we never questioned it.) Afterward, we would talk about it.

It wasn't a "This isn't appropriate for a child your age" conversation; she was always taking the temperature of how I had interpreted the objectionable content in books, somehow without obviously leading the discussions. I'm sure I missed a lot of the objectionable material, but the stuff that I picked up on, we talked about.

I have to say, I'm seriously impressed with how Mom parented us. When I was 14 years old, I was reading the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series (before they got all super-smutty), and one of the books centered around snuff films. My Mom, in her SuperMom cape, instead of ripping the book out of my hands and handing me something (perhaps) more age-appropriate, had a calm discussion with me about snuff films.

Stop a moment and think about that last sentence. How many parents could have a calm discussion with their teenage daughter about snuff films? Mom was pretty unflappable as a parent. I don't even remember her making crazy eyes, quickly changing the subject, or having an uncomfortable nervous laugh, ever.

Enough bragging on my mom. The point is, instead of censoring what we read, she made sure that she was informed about what we were reading. She read it herself. She talked to us. (Novel idea, that last one.)

It wasn't until I was in college where Mom actually expressed any negative opinions about *what* I was reading. My senior seminar class was on Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison. In case you're curious, filicide is where Mom draws the line. Not only did Mom not read any of the Morrison books, she also *did not* want to discuss any of it.

She never said, "Don't read it" or "Don't take the class", she basically said, "I just *can't* talk about this with you." I don't blame her; it was a seriously dark semester. By then, I was a GrownUp (sort of), and my choices in reading material were my own.

Books aren't dangerous. Sure, they put ideas in people's heads. But if you stay ahead of the curve, you can probably keep your kids from inciting a revolution with a few calm conversations.

Probably.

Smug cometh before the fall

Two weeks ago, I was telling Andrew how much I loved my iPod. It was a 2006, 5th generation video iPod (with a color screen!), it had 80G of memory, and I loved it. I also smugly declared that I had no need or desire to get a new, fancy iPod touch- unless they come out with one that has the same amount of memory as this one. (I have a lot of music. A LOT of music.)

Given that flash memory isn't quite there yet, I had been more than content with my precious iPod. Also, I told Andrew, since I take *exceedingly* good care of my stuff, I wasn't planning on replacing this iPod until the hard drive fails. Verne and I were in agreement on that one. We were smug as could be, and Verne may have thrown in a "Kids these days!" just for good measure.

The very next day, in a feat of spectacular klutziness, I managed to do a *spectacular* job dropping my iPod. I don't think I could have *thrown* it harder than it managed to drop.

No big; I've dropped it before. A few times. When I fired it up the next day, I noticed this:

Doesn't that make you sad just looking at it?

Hm. I could still *mostly* see what I was selecting, but over the next few days the screen got worse. And worse.

Still, Verne and I were intent not to replace this iPod. ("Kids these days", see above.)

With drama worthy of Sarah Bernhardt, I put my hand to my forehead and told Andrew that I would soldier on with a cracked screen.

Andrew, earning his nomination for Husband of the Year, kidnapped my ailing iPod and now, check it out:

Yes, I do have 694 podcasts episodes to listen to.

All better. Apparently, Andrew took my old iPod to go live on a farm**. Probably with LukeWarm, our old oven. Apparently, at the farm, Andrew found this little iPod who happened to need a home. You see, he's an older model, and nobody seemed to want him.

Andrew took him by his sync cable, and let the new iPod know that he'd have a long, happy life with me.

Provided that I don't drop him, that is.




** The "farm" is the Apple Repair/Replacement program, in case you're curious. Or you happened to destroy your screen, too.

Beauty is pain

One of my mother's favorite sayings is "Kill me, but make me beautiful". It's a cultural saying, but in an age of waxing, threading, and other painful beauty trends, it has never been more relevant.

My Sothia, fini.

That's how I feel about knitting ruffles. I love how they look. I love wearing them. I love adding a little extra bounce to my step to make them swing when I walk. I also find them utterly painful to knit.

Not literally, of course. It's not like faggoting, which is the natural enemy of my carpal tunnels. It's just... a lot of knitting. Which is a silly, because I'm usually itching to knit something else. Which is technically, THE SAME KNITTING.

But then you look at the ruffle-in-progress, how far you have to go, and if you're me, you feel like Brent Spiner in Independence Day. You might also have done a dramatic re-enactment for your family, shaking the shawl in front of you and rasping out, "Kiiiiiiiiiiiiill meeeeeeeeeee" in the creepiest voice you can muster. So creepy that both dogs decide it's time to leave the room.

So you knit and knit and knit. Then you knit some more. You decide that you will NEVER knit another ruffle EVER again so long as you LIVE.

You knit a baby hat and a baby sweater in the meantime, because sometimes you just need a relationship break from a project, you know? It's me, not you, Sothia. But since it was LOVE with Sothia, once you finished your dalliance with a baby hat and sweater, you come back, refreshed and ready to commit.

And you will commit, wholeheartedly. After what seems like an eternity, you begin the bind-off. You stay up really, really late because all you want in the world is the satisfaction of finishing this project. And also, Kit Kats.

I can feel your ruffle envy.

You double your yarn for the bind-off, because you LOVE how substantial it feels, and then spend the remaining 60% of the bind-off wondering if you have enough yarn to finish. You then decide if you run out of yarn, you're abandoning this project forever. Thankfully, you have enough (and a little leftover, even!) and that particular set of events doesn't transpire.

You go to bed, and the next day, you realize that you have a GORGEOUS shawl. You consider turning up the air conditioning so you can wear it around the house, but instead decide to weave in ends and take pictures of your beauteous shawl.

In my mind, this wrap will make me six feet tall. It's the "V".

You look at the colors, the beautiful ruffle, you feel that rush of accomplishment and pride at a job well done, and you say to yourself, "This wasn't so bad. It was really fun to knit."


"...Maybe I'll knit another one."

The Stay-At -Home Survival Guide: A review

I've had some questions about what I've been reading, as far as parenting books are concerned. The first book I read (and liked, nay, LOVED) was the The Stay-at-Home Survival Guide: Field-Tested Strategies for Staying Smart, Sane, and Connected While Caring for Your Kids by Melissa Stanton.

I'm not being paid to review this, Seal Press didn't send me a galley copy, and best of all? I borrowed it from my local library.

Cover, for you to enjoy

While it's true that I'm not a stay-at-home mom *yet*, that's the end goal. I was reading this book, and it was like Melissa Stanton had been following me around when it came to how other people reacted to our choice to have me stay home. True, she was a few years ahead of me (the book came out in 2008), but her powers of pre-cognition are to be commended.

But seriously.

Stanton talks about dealing with the "yes, but what do you DO" question, household finances, and how demanding being a full-time Mom can be. So it's not a parenting-parenting book, per se, but it helps parents. So it totally counts.

It took me a LONG time to figure out that most people don't respect useful life skills that they lack- like raising children, cooking, or knitting. People who don't (or can't) cook from scratch don't appreciate that skill from someone in a home environment. If you measure success and happiness in dollars and cents, any activity that doesn't make money is worthless and a waste of your time.

We know that's not true. Knitters put thousands of hours into projects every year- many of which never get finished. We knit because it brings us pleasure, because it can be challenging, because it is creatively fulfilling. Not because it is profitable- or even has the *potential* to be profitable.

[Did you just fall out of your chair laughing at the idea that hand knitting is - or could be - profitable? I did.]

Back to the book.

It also includes loads of useful advice and strategies on changing relationships (romantic and otherwise), keeping up your self-esteem, and division of labor.

Division of labor isn't really an issue in our house. Given all of the Mommy Memoirs I've been reading, Andrew is really and truly a prince among men. He doesn't expect to be waited on when he gets home from work, and doesn't assume that because I'm staying at home that I've become the maid, the cook, and the household personal assistant. I thought this was normal in a marriage, but I stand corrected. Also, horrified that it's *not* the status quo.

Not only does he contribute to household chores, but he usually also picks some sort of home improvement project every weekend (sometimes something small, sometimes something... bigger). For the record, I also try to defend his leisure time, by making sure he has plans to do something fun.

(Did I just sign my own death warrant by bragging on my husband? Let me balance all his great qualities with the fact that he snores like a buzzsaw and sometimes leaves his shoes in the living room. He also has a taste for handknit socks and wears a size 12 men's shoe. Move on, he's not so great.)

In short,  I really felt like Stanton addressed a lot of the issues that *all* parents have- not JUST stay-at-homes. I handed the book over to Andrew to read and he's finding it useful, too, for managing expectations (mostly). I've been screening the books, and handing over the ones that I particularly like to Andrew to read. (I have more time right now to sift through the chaff. Also, I read faster.)

I think this is a great book for *all* parents. Everyone has a schedule to accommodate, whether or not you work outside the home. I think the real key is that *both* parents need to read this book. (All the books, really, but this is a good place to start.)

The writing is compelling, Stanton has a personable style as a writer. I powered through this book in two days- that's how "readable" it is. Pick up a copy, you'll thank me for it.