Shmappy New Year!

A quick post to wish you all the best for 2010. 2009 rocked my face pretty hard - I go into this year with an additional person in my family and down one no longer properly functional organ (ditched the gallbladder on Wednesday.)

Also, Wynnie would like you to know that she is SHOCKED at what you did last night:

...and this morning she wants to have a talk about how disappointed she is.

Gwynevere Is Here!

And she's beautiful! We had a lovely (big!) baby girl on November 25, the day before Thanksgiving! She came along at 4:39 p.m., at 8 pounds 15 ounces and 19 3/4 inches (though I dispute that, since she was 21 inches just four days later.) She's in perfect health and nursing like a champ, and sleeping beautifully. I think she'd be inclined to sleep through most of the night if I didn't wake her up to feed her. As a happy aside, Wynnie shares a birthday with Kristi's brand new baby girl too! Fun fact, we also had our showers on the same date. Nothing in common. ;-)

With an incredibly supportive husband and fantastic labor nurse, I made it through all that with no drugs, as I'd hoped, and while I'm sure I made plenty of racket, I managed it with an alarmingly minimal amount of cursing, considering my typical blue streak. (Matter of fact, I only remember one F-bomb, and it was when I was decrying the air conditioning situation - who leaves a delivery room A/C set at EIGHTY???) I went into labor around 4:00 a.m. after about two hours of sleep, labored at home as long as I could, headed to the hospital shortly after noon (and would have sworn I'd been there for much longer than four and a half hours) and delivered her in pretty darn good time. I'd had a doctor's appointment the day before at which he wanted to discuss the c-section necessity if I went a whole lot longer, as I was a week past due when she arrived, and I told him I didn't see the need to discuss it, since I'd be having her the next day. He was as skeptical of my prediction as I was of his c-section and possibility-of-shoulder-dysplasia nonsense (we knew by this point that she was pretty big). So when he walked in to deliver her I hollered, in the midst of full blown delivery labor, "I TOLD YOU IT WOULD BE TODAY! HA!!" I appreciate his restraint in not telling me I was in a fine position to be smug, ahem.

It's been a very busy 19 days or so! Travis had two weeks off from work, which was such a blessing, and when he returned I didn't crash and burn like I was afraid of - she's been really great for me, blessed little girl. So things are progressing well for her and Travis, and mostly well for me, though I may be needing surgery down the road - I had a massive gallstone attack on Saturday. That was way worse than any labor pain, I thought I was dying and was begging for someone to either give me drugs or run me over in the parking lot. So the rumor is that I'll need to have my gallbladder removed, but I'm going to try to control that with diet for as long as I possibly can. (Travis is going to be annoyed when he gets home today and I haven't called the surgeon.)

But enough exposition - pictures!!

Here we are, our first family portrait, taken shortly after her arrival.


Can't resist this one - this is the first picture I took, with my phone, in the delivery room. Travis was completely in awe that he had a daughter - I was too exhausted to be emotional right away (that came later when I spoke to her for the first time.)


This was her first day home. Damn she's cute.


Travis blowing raspberries at the baby. Daddies are supposed to be the silly fun ones.


Naptime on the nursery floor. (The dogs and cats are doing really well with the new addition to the family. They're curious at best, but cautious. We're so grateful for their restraint.)


And that's our girl. :-)

Last Call!

Due for baby in just a week or two (that's due, of course, not some guarantee, as I keep reminding myself) and I've made some big headway around here - for example, I finally bought a new battery for the laptop, as I've been needing to do for a YEAR, so I can actually use this computer and let's pretend that means I'll blog more often...

I think I'll just cover the knit-related stuff for now - and then the next post you see from me you know will mean that she-or-he is here!

Yarn: Socks That Rock Mediumweight in "Fred Flintstone"
Pattern: Telemark Sweater by Erika Flory
US 4 needles
Size M (12 month)
Started: August 28
Finished: September 1
Mods: Seed stitch instead of garter, kfb instead of m1 (I'm crazy like that) and I think that's about it. Gauge was off (6 instead of 5 sts/in) so I went up a size, think I still ended up with something for a 12-month old, which is also fine.


Giant stack o' baby legwarmers - these will be good for Florida "winter" weather. All are superwash, most are just Dream in Color leftovers from the Tulip cardi, which brings us to....


Yarn: Dream in Color Classy (kit from The Sweet Sheep)
Pattern: Tulip Cardigan by Lindsay Pekny
US 5 and US 7 needles
Size 0-6 mo.
Started: April 24
Finished: April 29 (my Loopy Spring Fling project)
Mods: Had to finagle some things due to a shortage of yarn in some places, so there are some skimpy stripes and contrasting i-cord trim. Don't study the comparison between the cuffs of the left and right sleeves.


Yarn: Handmaiden SeaThree (silk and seasilk, very practical for baby knitwear)
Pattern: Avery by Kristi Geraci
US 7 needles
Size 3-6 mo.
Started: May 3
Finished: July 19 (I hit a lull in the knitting mojo)
Mods: None, other than I knit the mirror image of this one AGAIN. I started out fine, did something stupid, ripped back, and accidentally reversed the front and back when I started it up again. Duh.

I also knit this, but not for me:

Yarn: Valley Yarns Superwash
Pattern: Baby Sophisticate by Linden Heflin
US 8 needles
Size 6-9 mo.
Started: September 10
Finished: September 27
Mods: none other than making it a bit longer than written. This was a gift for Baby G. Actually, there was one other sweater that started out as a potential gift for Baby G but I botched it pretty good..


Yarn: Cascade Yarns Eco Alpaca
Pattern: Cabled Baby Raglan by Rebecca L. Daniels
US 4 needle
Started: July 19
Finished: September 10
Mods: Can we call a botching a mod? I dropped a stitch on the sleeve during the movie District 9. Later I picked it up and carried it up about 20 or so rows, creating a lovely pucker on the back of the sleeve. So it's got a little something, uh, special. (Oh well, it's a handwash-only baby sweater, it probably wasn't going to be in heavy rotation around here anyway!)

Then there's this, which I will probably finish eventually. Ugh, seaming...


Yarn: Mirasol Yarn Sampa (organic cotton)
Pattern: Trellis by Britta Stolfus Rueschhoff
US 7 needle
Started: August 9, 2009
Finished: uhhh....TBD


And of course, I'm working on birthing socks. Nearly finished - just working on the foot of the last one now. This is a three-ply handspun superwash merino I'm so happy with, knit into nearly-knee socks. Naturally, if I did something like this for my wedding, I had to have something equally special for baby's birth day. Halfway through these it occurred to me that baby would need special birth day socks too:


Yarn: Greenwood Cotton-Lycra sock yarn
Pattern: my own (I may write it up)
US 1 and US 2 needles
Started: October 25
Finished: October 28
Mods: I wrote it myself. And yet, actually, I did mod something - picked up on some screwed up decreases halfway up the hat and swapped those around.

One last thing I managed to pull off before the baby arrives (and later than I should have):


Orders of fingering-weight cashmere/nylon/superwash merino went out to both The Sweet Sheep and The Loopy Ewe. No telling what the future holds for The YoYo once MiniYo comes along, so if you're thinking you might wanna try some, now's a good time...


So I think that's about everything! More soon - hopefully!

One Other Little Thing...

OMG I'm back and it's only been like two days!

Nah, I'm just trying to enable you again. Remember back when I used to do that? I'm doing some reluctant but necessary destashy. You know, one of those things where I'm having to make room in the office/craft room for all of Mr. YoYo's crap because his office is now a nursery, and having to make room in the budget for all of Baby Yo's crap because, well, that will be my life now forevermore. I'll eventually be digging up all sorts of things, spinning fiber and whatnots, but for now I'm trying to part with some of my sock yarns. Loving homes needed for Duets, Cherry Tree Hill, Socks that Rock, Dream in Color, Mama E, Yarn Pirate, Sunshine Yarns, Sknitches, Zen String, etc etc etc....Want some? Good prices! Make offer! Going...fast?

OMG OMG OMG

Um. Hi. Yeah, I keep doing that thing where I appear, apologize, post, and disappear. It sucks. I've gotten some awesomely sweet emails in the past month or so (OH MY GOD I DIDN'T RESPOND TO YOU GUYS. I'm also pregstupid. I haven't been doing anything at all lately that I'm supposed to. See also: blogging, etsy shop. I can't tell you how special your sweet emails made me feel, and hopefully I'll remember to tell you personally and oh my God that made me sound like such a douche. I'm not a douche, I'm just stupid. I promise.) Anyway, thank you for all your fantastic comments and congrats on my pregnancy (remember that, like three months ago? Yikes.)

So I'm six and a half months along now (also yikes) and things are still going swimmingly. For those who said "But you look kinda skinny...?" to the photo I posted last time to indicate my pregnancy - yeah, I was like six weeks pregnant when I took that, and had just lost about 10 pounds to boot. (Good thing, too.) Right now I look more like this:

Yay crummy iPhone photos! I'm surprised at how...pregnant I look here. I mean, duh, I'm pregnant, but this definitely makes me look quite a lot more expansive than I see myself in the mirror most of the time. Deluded, maybe, but I swear I'm bigger at night, it's the strangest thing. And pardon my closet, it needs some work but we've been busy with the nursery. Oh, and I just came from the gym here. Hot. (I'm being very careful, just elliptical machine and gentle yoga stuff, but I'm trying to get exercise and stay healthy for the baby. Studies show childhood obesity may be determined in the womb, so build good habits now and all that crap.)

But there's more! I'm SO not sure I'm supposed to post this....but hopefully someone from Lark will let me know if I'm breaking a code.

MY FREAKING BOOK OVER HERE!!!


Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, it's not MY book per se. But remember how I called Cookie's book "my book" because I'd knit the sock on the cover? This book is at least closer to being "my book" than Cookie's was, in that Cookie's book was not my book in any way or shape. (PS: That did not stop me from noting to a yarn shop owner in North Carolina who had Cookie's book on display near the register that I TOTALLY KNIT THOSE SOCKS RIGHT THERE ON THE COVER. I have to be the coolest person alive. I hope to God no one ever gives me even an inch of fame, or I'll just become this huge walking bag of feminine hygiene.)


See, this is totally more like being actually my book, in that I'm published in it with my very own pattern and stuff. This was a pattern I did for Roxanne of faboo Zen Yarn Garden (and which she VERY graciously allowed me to submit to this book, which was gracious indeed since it's her right to decide what happens with the pattern, so when you knit these and all the other socks in this book, please use Zen Yarn Garden yarn, especially since it's awesome anyway and I totally would not lie to you - if it wasn't awesome I'd just say something nice about Roxanne's hair or something and be done with it, but her yarn really IS great stuff.)


In case you want to sort of be able to see the sock at all. I've seen the socks, so I'm more excited about my name in print. Oh, and by the way, I have these socks back in my possession now and will never be able to wear them because this hot chick in her stupid robe has totally ruined it and there's something decidedly less sexy about how I wear them - which right about now is on the swollen ankles of a pantsless pregnant woman watching old Golden Girls episodes on the WE network and eating Edy's Butterfinger ice cream straight out of the pint. (I wish that wasn't true - the only part I'm lying about is swollen ankles, really I haven't had that problem yet. But with my body temperature averaging about 457 degrees higher than normal, about the most dressed-up I can muster at home is a long-enough t-shirt. Long t-shirts are great. If you walk around PRETENDING you're wearing shorts under there, people will totally think you are. And yes, I did blather on about childhood obesity and all that earlier, so I'm not eating a LOT of ice cream, but I will admit it's made the odd appearance here and there on Golden Girls night.)

What? Book? Why, you're not here to picture me wandering around in my yard without pants on while trying to remember why I came outside in the first place - oh right, checking the mail. Wait, it's Sunday. Well now I have to find something to do because I'm standing in the yard pretending to have shorts on and I wouldn't want it to appear as if that was my sole purpose in coming out here and I can't check the mail because then I'll look like one of those lazy morons who forgot what day of the week it is, and when you see those people you always think they must have no jobs and just live off of some sort of trust fund and I really don't want the neighbors to think I'm some pantsless pregnant trust-fund kid. Oh, good, a fallen branch. I'll pick that up and then it'll look like I was being proactive.

See what pregnancy is doing to me? Let's change the subject back, shall we?


And LOOK! I get a BLURB! Isn't that what that's called? Words I wrote (supposedly - this was all done quite a long time ago, but that does SOUND like me) appear on the back of the book, and - I get such a kick out of this - my name has the words "sock designer" in front of it as if it were some sort of actual job I have or something. I'm completely terrified someone is going to mistake me for an actual sock designer now. Seriously, this book is loaded with Real Actual Designer types who have GORGEOUS stuff in here. Of course I've only fast-forward paged through it to find my name in print, because I'm cool like that, but the socks I saw on the way are AMAZING. I can't wait to sit down with the book for real and actually study them - there have to be at LEAST 10 I saw that were must-knits, which is a ton for me since in any given book that I have to have, there might be two patterns in there that I would consider things I could actually sit down and knit some day. (And sock knitting could be interesting challenge for me indeed, since I haven't picked up a sock in probably four or five months. Unless you count baby legwarmers. Let's not get into the baby legwarmers right now. It's a disease I have, probably on par with Cara's Monkey sickness.)

And I can tell they're real-live going to publish it for sure, because look! Pre-order the book on Amazon!

So what's new with you? Hopefully I'll post again before the baby's born...I'm averaging one every three months now, right, so that puts the next one just before the due date. (November 19th - also my mom's birthday!) I promise to at the VERY least come back and tell you when Yo-Yo and Mr. Yo-Yo welcome Little Yo.

(I'm also hoping to do some sort of book giveaway when this gets published, which I THINK is supposed to be some time in October...?)