Sweaters,
socks,
hats,
scarves,
shawls,
2 baby quilts,
gloves,
new airport terminal building,
new kitchen,
a sprint triathlon,
my first attempts at canning (jam & green beans)...
It seems I've had quite a busy 2009!
(I snuck in one little project that's still a work-in-progress - do you see it?)
Alpaca Ribbon Scarf
Originally uploaded by kerner
Gloves and a matching scarf for my mother in law! Patterns are noted under the pictures; both are made out of Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca-Silk.
Noro Entrelac Scarf
Originally uploaded by kerner
A basic entrelac scarf in Noro Kureyon for my sister. Entrelac scaves in a yarn with long color repeats is definitely one of the most impressive things you can knit, at least as far as non-knitters are concerned. And it's really not that hard. I promise - just follow the directions (even though they might seem wrong or confusing) and it will turn out really nice.
Odessa Hat - Manos SIlk Blend
Originally uploaded by kerner
An Odessa hat for my mom (actually I knit a second one for her in a different color of the same yarn - I'm keeping this one!!)
Fleece-Lined Hat
Originally uploaded by kerner
A nice warm hat for my Grandpa - just a basic rib in basic Cascade 220. I lined it with fleece to keep his ears warm while he's working outside on the farm.
Snowboarder's Hat
Originally uploaded by kerner
(I promise I finished this before Christmas!) A cool cabled snowboarder's hat for my brother-in-law. He said he wanted earflaps! It's really warm alpaca yarn.
Of course, it's impossible for me not to always be thinking ahead, and I'm already seeing lots of blog posts about New Years Resolutions. I love list-making and self-improvement projects, so you can imagine I love coming up with ideas about how to make the next year the best. one. ever. I really like Gretchen Rubin's idea about one main goal or focus each month in 2010. But this year is a little tricky - how do I go about making plans when so much is unknown? I'm due with my first baby in late March, and I feel like all bets are off after that, because I'm so clueless about the reality of caring for a baby. Any experienced moms want to chime in here?
ps, if you're just going to tell me how impossibly hard my life is going to be for the next 18 years, I'd rather remain blissfully ignorant. Thanks!
Kelli is doing Christmas crafting of heroic proportions this year, which she is documenting on her blog as "Adventathon." After reading more than 2 weeks of her great ideas, it dawned on me that coming up with 25 days of fresh crafting ideas might be a bit difficult. To help a sista out, I volunteered some photos of jam jars (made this summer) that I had recently fancied up to give away as Christmas presents. If you want to make your own Holiday Jam, check out my contribution to Adventathon on Kelli's latest post.
How far along? 26 weeks.
Total weight gain/loss: About 15 pounds
Maternity clothes? Yes - I officially can't pull off my pre-pregnancy suit jackets anymore, they're way too short!
Stretch marks? Not yet!
Sleep: Pretty good. Apparently I'm getting used to sleeping on my side, although my arm keeps falling asleep.
Best moment this week: Finally figuring out what the strange pain I'd been having in my upper right abdomen was - bad gall bladder! I'm not happy I'm having the problem, but I am happy that it seems like its going to be manageable for the next 14 weeks with a strict low-fat diet, no surgery required.
Movement: Yep! He seems to move off and on all day long, and luckily he mostly settles down when I'm trying to go to sleep.
Food cravings: None, thank goodness, this gall bladder thing has really restricted what I can eat!
Labor Signs: No
Belly Button in or out? in
What I miss: Cheese. (Dang gall bladder. As if alcohol, soft cheese, and lunch meat weren't enough to take away during pregnancy?)
What I am looking forward to: My doctor's appointment tomorrow! I get to either hear his heartbeat or see a little in-office sonogram almost every time, so it's pretty cool. (I do have to take the dreaded glucose test, though!)
Have you read Friday Night Knitting Club? It's not exactly high literature, but it's a really sweet story about some unlikely friendships formed between a group of women who start knitting together in the main character Georgia's yarn shop. I am very lucky to have a few close friends that live near me who are also knitters, but I know not everyone has that luxury, and it has taken me several years to find those people. For me, part of the reason I started and continue this blog is the connection with other knitters that I make, even if it is from a long geographical distance. I have had the opportunity to meet a few "blog friends" in person, and its generally been a really great experience.
My longtime blog-friend Stephanie and I were emailing earlier today about reading Knit Two (the sequel to Friday Night Knitting Club) together and trying to do an online book club-type discussion thing (maybe over Google video chat? We're still working out the details.) We will probably do our first discussion sometime the week between Christmas and New Year's.
Anyway, we decided to put it out there to see if anyone else was interested. Let me know, and I'll email you to work out the details.
Kitchen - View 2
Originally uploaded by kerner
Kitchen - View 1
Originally uploaded by kerner
It's really, finally done! Can you spy my perch at the bar, with my laptop? It's funny the little things that are my favorite parts -the faucet is really cool! (It switches from regular flow to a sprayer, and the nozzle part pulls right out of the main faucet part.) I also really like the built-in bookcase for all of our cookbooks. We've had that pot rack forever, but it fits in perfectly even though we didn't really plan for it.
I have to give big huge kudos to our cabinet guys, they did a beautiful job. And now, the boring specs: The wall color is Ruskin Room Green (Sherwin-Williams color in Behr paint), the trim is Polar Bear (Behr) and the countertop is Olive Green Silestone.
Here's my "new" decoration for the year (using what I already had!) A little Christmasy vignette on the entryway table. It has random ornaments, a candle, a pinecone I found outside, and some cinnamon sticks. It really does make the house smell fantastic when you walk in.
Ok knitters, no spoilers on what I'm knitting here (if you know)... but didn't this knit up pretty? I love hand-painted/variegated yarns in the skein, but they are sooo hard to make look good once they are knit. Flashing & pooling absolutely drives me crazy, and I have been know to rip and reknit the same yarn 5 or 6 times until I can find a pattern, gauge, and yarn combo that works without pooling. This particular project only took one try (hallelujah!) but lots and lots of Ravelry stalking helped my odds.
I have discovered the secret to continuing a knitting blog while simultaneously knitting for your snooping relatives... close-ups! I don't have much doubt that a seasoned knitter would recognize this somewhat classic pattern, but I think it's safe enough to give a peek without giving away too much.
Christmas knitting is going really well - it's amazing how much more I can get done now that I have a living room to lounge in after work & on the weekends! (Speaking of which, I know I owe you guys some good photos of my finished house project. Just a few more boxes to put away and pieces of furniture to put into place - it's getting very close now!)
I am also getting realistic about the amount of free time that I have between now and Christmas, and how I want to spend that free time. I've cut out a few projects I had planned, but I am still happy with the number of handmade gifts that I'm giving this year (made by me and others - thank goodness for etsy, right? The link goes to my favorite sellers - it can be hard to find good stuff!)
Instead of spending all my free evenings at home, in a knitting frenzy, I am trying to remember the "reason for the season" by participating in some volunteer opportunities coordinated by my church and other organizations I'm involved in. Last week, several members of my Rotaract Club went to a local children's shelter (a residential facility for children who are taken away from bad parents by the state) to help them decorate for Christmas. We were assigned to help decorate a "cottage" that was home to about 15 teenage boys. When we got there, all they had was an enormously tall artificial Christmas tree with no decorations. (Seriously, it must have been 14 feet tall.) As we struggled to figure out how to decorate such a tall tree, the boys explained that they had cobbled it together from two regular-sized trees: two bottoms, two middles and one top section! Very ingenious.
Luckily, we brought lots of donated and new decorations, and by the time we left, it was a literal winter wonderland. There was not a single surface that was left un-Christmas-ed. The boys particularly enjoyed hanging Christmas lights in the windows of their communal living room and decorating all the windows with fake snow (the kind in a spray can). I learned to tie fancy bows from another Rotaractor who grew up helping her parents in their floral shop. We attached them to the tree while it was tilted down (so we could reach) then we leaned back upright and the boys went to town decorating with the random assortment of ornaments we brought. Luckily none were too fragile, since the solution to getting ornaments to the top of the tree was to just toss them up there. (Hey, they are teenage boys, after all!)
It was so fun to spend the evening listening to Christmas music, baking cookies, and generally doing Christmas-y domestic things with the boys. From my other experiences at this facility, I am well aware that it may have been the first time the boys ever had an experience like that, and I'm so happy I was able to help out -- even if my biggest contribution was a few pretty bows! As much as I love giving and receiving presents (and I really, really do!), it's experiences like these that will stick with me as I think about how I spent my Christmas. I hope you find the opportunity to do something to help others this Christmas season. Your own personal version of Santa's Workshop can wait, I promise.
IMG_1367
Originally uploaded by kerner
The baby shower was yesterday, so it's time for the big blog-reveal!
My latest quilt is for a baby girl due in January (her momma is doing a good job of hiding her adorable basketball-belly in this pic). The parents-to-be love horses, so I decided to go with a cowgirl theme.
The two primary cowgirl fabrics are a pink Tumbleweed Tots print from Alexander Henry and I believe the white print is from Robert Kaufmann. To accent the cowgirl fabrics, I used red, blue, and pink fabric that looks like bandannas. All the fabrics except the pink Tumbleweed Tots were purchased at Hobby Lobby (which has a surprisingly good selection of designer fabrics, which are often on sale).
I'm still not 100% satisfied with my quilting skills, and I'd really love to learn to do free-motion quilting, but I love making these keepsakes for my friends and their kids. It's so great to go over to visit and see my quilts in action - apparently they make excellent tummy-time mats/spit catchers.
Next up (we're have a bit of a baby epidemic around here) is a paper doll-themed quilt. Will I be able to finish it before my belly gets too big to fit in front of the sewing machine? It's a race against time...!
