7 down, 29 to go.

Baby Girl will be here in 10 weeks. I’m afraid I’m running out of time. However, I’ve been steadily plugging away at these blocks, stitching as fast as I can until my fingers cramp and the metallic needle smell won’t wash off.

I’m skipping around the alphabet as I assemble the pieces. Designing the sides with the upper and lowercase letters, as well as the sides with my own original designs is taking longer than I like. It’s all trial and error, but I’ve had some success the first time out of the box:

B is for ball (I freehanded the stitching), E is for egg, K is for key (which is modeled after the key in Cinderella, my son’s current favorite flick), M is for mittens, N is for needle, P is for pig (whom I happen to think is pretty damn cute) and S is for sun. I’m almost finished with G (for grapes or guitar, not sure which yet) and A (for what, I don’t know yet). I’ve got a pretty good idea of how I’d like the coordinating number blocks to look, but haven’t sketched them out yet. So far my son loves the blocks I’ve finished- he hurls them around the room and shakes them to hear the jingle bells I’ve suspended inside. I hope my baby girl loves them as much as he does.

I’ve been busy.

I haven’t just been laying on the couch, eating bon bons and watching my stories. I’ve been laying on the couch, eating Zingers and watching old CSI episodes on the laptop with yarn in my hands. Behold:

I’ve got duplicates of all the letters but V (I ran out of purple yarn) and I’ve started to design my own letter blocks.

I designed the baseball myself! (Yes, I am a little proud it turned out so nice.) I have no idea where the original pattern came from, but my mom had started some of these letters when I was about 4. She never finished the blocks, but kept all the pieces and the patterns. I’m hoping to finish these for my little girl before she gets here, but with six sides per block, plus original designs, plus my insane desire to design 10 number blocks as well, she’ll probably get them either by the time she’s 30 or she takes over and works on them for her own little girl. I hope not, but I’ve got less than 12 weeks until her arrival and I haven’t finished her baby blanket either.

On a related note, being 7+ months preggo in the summer sucks ass, especially when you’re fondling yarn. Thank God we have the a/c up and running. I think this project is going to require more Zingers.

My greatest foe.

Hello, purl.

In an effort to work towards my goal of learning to knit, I picked up some wool and needles at the local craft store. After a few hours, lots of swearing and two cramped wrists, I had something that looked akin to cat puke. Right now that “project” is in time-out. Then I dug out some of my old yarn and bigger needles with the hopes that I might actually see what the hell it was I’m supposed to be doing. After a few failed attempts and one dropped stitch that ended up with me ripping the whole damn thing back (and more swearing and lots of stabbing motions), I’ve so far made this:

Which really doesn’t look like much. It could be a skinny scarf, I suppose, but right now it’s just something to keep my hands busy while I watch TV. Who knows- it might turn out to be something when I get done. Right now it’s just practice. I also managed to complete one plastic canvas square for a set of alphabet blocks I’d like to make for New Baby. Somehow it took much long than I thought it would (about an hour and a half longer) and now I’m contemplating the other kajillion sides that are left to be stitched. I have 20 more weeks… That’s plenty of time, right?

I also played hookey from being a mom yesterday (which is pretty hard when you’re gestating, but I managed) and ran around KC with my mom getting into all sorts of trouble. After French apple pie and coffee at The Uppercrust, we ran around Pryde’s like two kitchen gadget-mad idiots and tried not to max out the credit cards. Then it was off to The Studio, where the very kind lady working tried to enable my fiber habit and failed when I told her that I would only buy more once I learned how to knit a sock and with the way things are going so far, it wasn’t looking very good for her store. She helped me pick out some lovely sage yarn and dpns to help me along. Now I just have to sit down with my friend who promised sock lessons and DO IT.

Maybe the magic sock knitting faerie will visit me and install the magic that it takes into my hands so that they communicate to each other and stop trying to attack the yarn like I’m hooking it instead?

Wish me luck.

Sometimes I make stuff.

You know, instead of just insisting that I do and then making excuses as to why I haven’t. Behold:

A really phallic carrot! I don’t know how the creator of the pattern crocheted hers so tightly, but mine came out twice the projected height despite using a hook one size smaller. I don’t get it, but I think it still turned out cute.

Bunny! I made this set for my niece for Easter. She’s only four months old, but I hope some day she’ll appreciate all the time, effort and swearing I put into each stitch.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Excuses.

So, it’s April. Shit. I promised myself everyday for the last week I was going to post something before March was up. Argh.

In my defense, I’m still growing a person. That takes a lot of energy and time and my other kid doesn’t seem to understand that Mommy just wants to sleep on the couch all day and wake up in September. Also, beyond all reasonable sanity, we adopted two puppies. TWO. I didn’t even want one dog, and yet a few weeks ago I woke up, visited a friend and ended up taking TWO dogs home.

Meet Ruby and Apollo. Could you say no to a face like Ruby’s? Or look deep into Apollo’s clear blue eyes and not feel a little tug at your heart? I swear, between the raging preggo hormones and my love of baby animals, I had no chance. Good thing my husband likes to humor me and agreed that we could adopt both. I’m also grateful he talked me out of adopting the third sibling since that would have been TOO MUCH but my god, she was a cutie too.

Between running after my one fur-less child and two new furballs, I’ve been itching to craft. Easter is coming up shortly (too shortly, I might add) and I need to make something for my new niece. I ordered this pattern, so hopefully I can get it done before we go out of town for the holiday. That, and I’m out of the plastic eyes for my amigurumi projects (which irks me to no end) and Hobby Lobby no longer carries them. I ordered some online, but am worried they won’t get here quick enough, so I might have to do a craft search at Michaels or possibly JoAnns. Feh. I haven’t had too much luck in past craft pursuits and don’t really have the energy to run all over town just for some damn plastic eyes.

It just dawned on me that my life used to be much cooler.

I’m still working on the blanket for New Baby. And by “working on” I mean I occasionally think about digging it out of the bag but read a book or go to sleep instead. I also received another excellent tin of buttons from my mom as well as a bunch of rug yarn and plastic canvas from about 20 years ago. While most people sneer at the thought of using plastic canvas, I’m super excited to make alphabet building blocks for New Baby. Mom already has a pattern for them and completed quite a few sides, but I’m thinking of designing my own. Again, this takes energy, but I’m hopeful the second trimester energy spike will arrive any day now.

Pictures soon, hopefully once the battery recharges and my Nikon stops acting like a spoiled brat.

The world’s best apple pie.

Behold.

I’ve made this pie several times before, but whatever magic I baked into it this time made it taste even better. Two days and several heavenly sighes later, it was gone. Recipe can be found here.

Button, button…

Hi. I suck at blogging.

In my defense, I have a very active toddler and a not as active Foetus, who while only 2 inches long at the moment and only recently having gotten rid of its tail, still can bring me to my knees with nausea so severe that I must nap several times a day. Which is not conducive to a toddler schedule that only takes one nap and that’s usually after I beg and beg and beg him to go to sleep, for the love of god, don’t make Mommy cry.

Meanwhile, I have become fascinated with old buttons. Don’t ask me why, but one day it popped into my head that I. MUST. HAVE. BUTTONS. I coerced my visiting mom to hunt some down with me at a local antique mall. Sure enough, they had lots of buttons, but most of them matched and were teeny. I wanted a huge bag or jar of buttons that didn’t match and had all sorts of colors, shapes and textures. After pawing through their selection and not finding what I really wanted, I spied something out of the corner of my eye.

True love for under $5.

Then my darling mom found me two more jars of buttons on her recent trip to Iowa. Two! Whole jars! All for me!

Hello, gorgeous.

And what shall I do with all my glorious buttonage? Perhaps I should spread them all out and roll around on the floor with them. Or maybe I should count them, sort them, make up histories and lives for the clothes and people who owned them before me. Maybe I shouldn’t be weird and just sew them onto hats, scarves and blankets.

Ah, yes. I have plans.

Busy bee.

So, Christmas has come and gone. The New Year is past and we’re already well on our way to plowing through January. Usually I love this time of year, all the traditions and food and cards in the mail. You get new stuff and can purge old things, try something new and spend time with people you (generally) like. I finished up my semester with all As (go, me!) and had three lovely Christmases.

Then I had the plague.

Without going into grim details, my son caught some sort of virus that he lovingly spread to me. Volcanoes of disgusting bodily fluids came out of places they shouldn’t, especially all at the same time. This was spread to the ILs, my husband, back to the ILs and now, knock on wood, is tormenting other people far, far away from us. It was the nastiest few days I’ve ever spent, especially since I just wanted to curl up and die while being reminded that in the “Mommy Handbook” you don’t ever get a day off to curl up and die properly.

Still, I did manage to play with some yarn before I was so weak I couldn’t even hold my toothbrush without tipping over. I made a lovely baby blanket for my new niece (who rudely came into this world three weeks early when I hadn’t even figured out what stitch I was going to use, let alone started anything remotely resembling a blanket, but she’s cute enough that I don’t have to hold that against her forever and ever). I whipped up four cotton dishrags for a Christmas present that turned out quite nice. I started another baby blanket for a little girl who could be here any time now. My SIL and I made custom onesies for my new niece, making my ovaries tingle and shout “hey, have another baby and you too can make super-cute onesies for it!” All in all, the craftiness has been flowing and it feels good to run yarn through my fingers again.

Next up: organizing my sewing space and attempting curtains. God, help us all.

I still live here.

What with the semester coming to an end, moving into a new space, taking care of my kid and a thousand other daily tasks, writing has mostly gone by the wayside. That, and despite being busy as hell, all I want to do is play with yarn. I wasn’t letting myself though, because other things needed to come first. Like clean underwear and trying to find the floor under piles and piles of boxes. For some reason my teachers expect me to show up and be prepared by having done the readings and for some even stranger reason, I’ve actually (pretty much, mostly, kinda) obliged.

But then we got the news that my new baby niece is being born three weeks early. Do I have her blanket done? No. Had I even started it when I got the news? Uh, I had the yarn bought. That counts, right? Of course I couldn’t find it to save my life, what with all the moving mess and the piles and piles (and piles) of crap. Fortunately, I found the yarn and a hook and a little time to sit down and crochet.

It was heavenly.

I missed the yarn wrapped around my fingers, the soft shushing noise it makes when the hook skips in and out of the loops. The first skein is gone, the second is halfway there and I just hope that I have enough yarn to make a decent sized blanket. It’s shaping up to be quite lovely and I can’t wait for her to get her so she can snuggle up inside the warm little pockets the shell pattern will create.

Who needs clean underwear when there’s yarn to play with?

Holy shit and Hallelujah!

For the first time in my adult life, the person I voted for actually won. Hurray! I’m completely excited that this nation decided they weren’t going to take it anymore, trekked down to the polls and made their voice heard. Good job, everyone!

I made an attempt at a story for NaNo, but it came out as barely fictionalized ranting about my current situation. Yesterday I tried again, but only had about twenty minutes to tap anything out between classes and what I did write wasn’t horrible inspiring either. It seems like I get what I think will be a good start, one perfect sentence mired down by lots of inane details. The more I write, the more I doubt. Who would want to read this dreck when even I don’t want to read it?

Still haven’t touched my yarn. It’s calling to me, especially since I have two baby blankets to make very soon (hello, January babies!). I keep telling myself that I’ll start them once I have a free weekend (ha!) or over the school holidays (double ha!). I have a feeling I’ll be meeting these babies before the yarn makes it on the hook.

Sigh.