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 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!!
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!
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?
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:
I suppose I should format this post in the Standard Acceptable Prose Of Long-Absent Blogger, which is to say that I should start out with generic shock at how long I've been silent ("Has it really been [insert number of days] since my last post??"), proceed to vague reasons and apologies for said absence as if your every morning hangs on my updates ("Test knitting....busy-ness....secret projects....etc.....sorry sorry sorry....") and then finish up by regaling you with every boring and excruciatingly minute detail of the last however-many-weeks-or-months that I've been absent ("So THEN my boss said....and I told her....and she told me....and I said to her....")
Okay, now that all that is out of the way....hi! Yeah, I know. But like I said, secret projects, plus a very busy few months that have plenty to boast in worthy news - a long-in-coming shop update and sale, rehearsals and opening for the local community theatre show Li'l Abner, which turned out to be more challenging for me than I'd originally anticipated, more detail on that toward the end of the post, a trip or two, and a planned development - but not enough energy to post it all. I have some knits I need to photograph and share, which I will no doubt get to eventually.....well, let's not say "no doubt" but you can hang with the firm deadline of "eventually".
There was the Loopy Ewe Spring Fling, where I took practically zero pictures but had quite the time, especially visiting Loopy (with Aimee and Teenuh!) and seeing my yarn on their shelves. (On that front - it was quiet with Loopy for a while, but I have another batch in the works for the summer with both Loopy and The Sweet Sheep. A new yarn base too. Woot!)
Travis and I got out of the hotel one day to visit the Arch.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.................
....that is all. Thanks for tuning in to this week's edition of Fangirl Obsessive: The Notorious Nitpicker Goes To The Cinema.
Today we'll focus on some of my better news of late:
1) It's hubby Travis' birthday! Well, March 3rd - which is what day it will be by the time feeds update, probably....I'm close enough!
2) I finished another something:
Okay, I have a blog post about the Oscars that I abandoned about twelve minutes into the broadcast, after spending much of the preshow basically writing, "I like that. I like that too. That's nice." Well, that and lots of bitching about Seacrest. But yeah, the show overall, while I enjoyed it and liked the new style generally speaking, was pretty dull from a blogging standpoint. Mostly good fashion, no surprises in the winners (other than foreign film: whaaaaaat?) and overall just not a lot to snark or get really excited about. My post will probably languish in draft hell for all eternity.
But I did finish this yesterday:
So every year I get really obsessed with the Oscars for no discernible reason (they are not in any way indicative of the BEST work of the year, just the most publicized...and yet I plan my whole late winter around this event) and I drive myself crazy into the ground trying to see as many nominated works as I can. (It's especially difficult to pull off when I restrict myself to the first showing on weekends, traditionally the cheapest available ticket and the only budget-friendly way to stick to my plan.)
I've seen a number of powerful and impressive films in this pursuit, and then like NONE of them got nominated for best picture. Lucky for me, that sacred institution AMC Theatres is doing something that theatres nationwide should have been doing annually for 30 years - they're showing all five best picture nominees back to back in a single day. Blessedly, the tickets are cheaper than they would be to see each individually - $30 for all five - and include bottomless popcorn, a saving grace for those of us with husbands of infinite metabolism. (I for one will tote a bag of radishes and cucumbers, thank you.)
I'm saying hallelujah that the one film we did see, Benjamin Button, is the one showing smack in the middle of the day. There's a lakefront park and walking trail about 100 yards from the theatre, so we can get outside into the real world, have lunch, go for a walk, hit a Starbucks....I think it'll be a nice day. It's especially great for those of us in a strange area where, inexplicably, Paul Blart showed in every multiplex but no one really felt like putting Milk on a screen. (Um, thanks? Welcome to the South, baby.)
If you want to see if an AMC in your area is mounting the effort, check here.
And I'm thinking I may "live-blog" the whole event. (The Oscars, not the five movies. God, would that be torture for you or what?) By "live-blog" I mean, I'll write one ungodly long post and then publish when the thing is over, rather than assault your bloglines with 1400 posts all night. Things I always like to snark on: who won, who deserved it, who gave a catty sideways look when she lost (lookin' at you, Jolie), who looked great (expectation: Hathaway) and who looked jacked as hell (expectation: Cameron Diaz, as always, will appear to have run there straight from the gym...in Encino; and God willing, Meryl Streep will show up in stirrup pants again like she did to the SAG Awards, not expecting to be shown on camera in full view and only dressing for her gracious-and-lovely-from-the-bust-up loser shot.)
Is anyone in need of the Winter '08/'09 Vogue Knitting? (It's the one currently on newsstands.) I subscribed and figured my first issue would be Spring, so I bought the Winter issue last week and lo, another arrived in my mailbox today - now I has two. First commenter takes it.
Well, I'm well on my way to earning that new cowl. (Still not here, and the postal workers didn't abscond with it after all, so kpixie has sweetly offered to send another my way. Kind customer service is alive! IT'S ALIIIIVE!!!)
I've been sick almost this entire week, in a bizarre twist that left me home ill from work for four days (!!), save an ill-conceived three-and-a-half hour attempt to return to work yesterday. I felt fine Monday, a little achey but I assumed that had to do with the new diet-and-exercise I've finally picked back up (down four pounds, y'all!) and then right before bed I coughed, just the once, and it had that very alarming chest rattle sound and felt ever so briefly like I'd been donkey-punched in the sternum. "Uh-oh." Sure enough, I woke up on Tuesday half-dead and have clung to that state of being ever since. The doctor said it's a virus (read: suck it up and ride it out, no drugs we can prescribe for that one) and most of what I've been capable of for those four days is napping and occasionally dragging it into the kitchen to make tea, then wheeze my way back to the couch. It was evident that I should not have gone back to work when I got there and was met with a chorus of "Whoa, what happened to you?"s and "Man, you look awful!"s. Aww, thanks, guys.
But, sickness is good for knitting - when I'm not sleeping, I'm sitting on the couch watching DVDs of TV (Bones and Big Bang Theory, primarily, since you're curious) and knitting at quarter-speed. I finally managed to pull off this baby surprise jacket I've been plugging at most of the month. Why did this seem to take so LONG when it's for such a tiny person?
I think I angered a postal employee. I've not received a scrap of mail in my P.O. box in four days. That's forever in the land of coupons, catalogs, magazines, junk mail, and never-ending bills. (I owes me some money.) The last two packages I've received that were too big for my li'l mailbox went into parcel lockers, with no corresponding key or notice placed in my box, and I finally had to go beg for them after I got an e-mail from a friend wondering if I'd not received her gift or if I was just ungrateful.
And two weeks ago I ordered this pattern (click the link, click the link, it's gorgeous!) with a dire NEED TO KNIT IT RIGHT NOW and have been waiting.....and waiting.....and waiting. I have a feeling it may be sent in one of those hard-to-bend envelopes that's braced with cardboard or something (waiting for a response from the vendor on how they ship to confirm my hypothesis) in which case it, too, is likely sitting abandoned in a parcel locker, keyless. I'm getting annoyed.
I need that pattern to start that project too, because all I have on the needles currently is this baby surprise jacket for a friend's new baby:
Just a quick note that there's going to be a shop update today (Monday) at 10:00 a.m. Eastern with lots of fun stuff - four different yarn bases, nineteen different colorways (some repeatable, some one-of-a-kind), and two batches of my Wait Wait Don't Tell Me yarns.
If you're interested:
Sock yarns up for grabs - prices should be on all the Flickr descriptions, e-mail to alysonknitsATgmailDAHTcom if you're interested. (There are two Sundara yarns listed - those are swapped already, but to get rid of them I'd have to make a new mosaic and ehhhhhhhhh.)
If you can complete something just under the gun, then I completed this the opposite of that. I started Silken Scabbard for my NaKniSweMo project in November. I decided shortly thereafter that I'd rather gift the sweater, so I wasn't able to work on it as much as planned, due to the giftee's presence during my long roadtrip and vacation at the end of November. I had planned to finish it by the end of 2008, and only had about 15 rounds of a sleeve left to completion on New Year's Eve, and then I kind of basically set my hand on fire making dinner and that sort of precluded getting any knitting done that night, what with all the screaming pain and aching. (Fine now, knitting well, thanks.) So NOW, FINALLY:
Click for 2007 Knits
Click for 2006 Knits
