Little Surprises :-)

Little did I know that after my last post just over a month and a half ago that I would be going into labor 5 days later. I had tunnel vision. My due date was March 2 and my last day at work was March 15, so me being Type A and all I thought I had 2 weeks to get everything squared away. I had to get everything organized in the nursery, finish up the crib set I was sewing up, clean the house, and get some pre-made meals made and frozen. I had a list and I was determined to get it done. It seemed attainable within my 2 week time frame.

Saturday started out well. I did some last minute baby shopping with my mom and sister. Its a good thing that I was able to get the last minute shopping done because late Saturday night / early Sunday morning my contractions started. Although I was unsure if it was actual labor or false labor. My contractions were consistently 5-7 minutes apart for the next 3 days. Same intensity. Which contradicted what I had been told in prenatal classes. So you can see my confusion. We went to the hospital to get assessed the following Tuesday and found out I was 4cm dilated. So when I went back home I felt better knowing that  I was actually in labor. Although I had to wait until my labor progressed further to go back to the hospital. Which I was happy with. Starting 7:45am Wednesday February 20 is when things got interesting and startes to progress quickly. My water broke and the contractions started to get very intense. When we got to the hospital things progressed from there and our baby girl was born at 4:25pm weighing 7lbs 4oz. We named her Anna Rose and she's the spitting image of her father. He's quite the proud papa :-)

 

So there has been practically no knitting until, literally, the last 2 days. And even then it's sporadic knitting. Basically when ever Anna isn't hungry, poopy, fussy, ect. I was able to finish the Baby Kimono and the Ribbed Socks. But haven't taken any FO pictures yet. I'll hopefully have those up in the next couple of days.

Happy Knitting :-)

Progress...

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted an entry but we’ve been busy. We had to squeeze in some Prenatal Classes in last weekend. Which was very informative. I was glad that we took them. My husband was also enlightened about how important his role is as a support person for the labor and even more so when we bring our newborn home.

I’ve also been busy the last week training my replacement at work. Which is hard for me. It’s hard for me to hand over all my work to 2 people and “shadow” them to train them. I find it horribly boring. But it needs to be done.

Pregnancy wise: it’s been an interesting week. There’s not much space left in there and she’s getting restless. I’m starting to feel like I’m done with being pregnant. Not in a negative way though. I’m uncomfortable no matter what I do and I’m hoping she decides to make an early appearance, but ultimately the decision is hers alone. So we’ll see how this progresses.

On the knitting front, there hasn’t been too much progress. I have made it just over half of the way through my Baby Kimono. I like how it’s coming together so far. Hopefully I can get this baby casted off this week so I can start (or possibly complete) a couple other projects :-)

Lazy Sunday...

I just can't seem to catch up on my sleep lately. So today I decided that it was going to be a lazy Sunday.

So my husband took Lola ice fishing and I gave Peanut and Elliot a smoked pork bone. I'm guaranteed some quiet for a couple hours ;-) Elliot is quite excited that he got a Big Boy Bone :-)

I turned on the TV. Sadly not much is on on Sundays. Soooo... I'm watching My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding. Surprisingly enough it's completely shocking how ridiculous their wedding dresses are. I'm a bit captivated.

Anyways... I picked up my current WIP. I'm working on a Garter Stitch Baby Kimono by Joji Locatelli. I've had this in my queue for a while. I just couldn't decide on a yarn. While tossing the stash last weekend I found a skein of Tanis Fiber Arts Blue Label in Prism and thought it would look great. Prism has been a retired or discontinued colorway since August 2011 I believe but I acquired it from another Raveller. So far I love how its turning out. The colors are a bit more saturated than the picture shows. I can't wait to see it completed.

Now off to knit :-)

Hormones...

I found this image the other day on the internet and I got a giggle out of it :-)

I think one of the most surprising and unexpected things that has occurred to me during pregnancy is the surge of hormones that I get sporadically. It makes me extra emotional or hormonal at unexpected times. Which I am not used to, even being at 35 weeks pregnant. I’m usually not a person who cries but something miniscule will have me trying to suppress the overwhelming need to burst out in tears. Also another side effect is the completely unexpected surge of hormonal rage that comes out from time to time. Something little, that normally I wouldn’t really care about, sends me into a hormonal rage. I think I was unprepared for this aspect of it. I can deal with the spontaneous tears but the occasional burst of anger is hard for me to deal with. I find a lot of times if I know I can feel a hormonal rage coming on, I just go into a quiet area for some “me time” and eventually it subsides. My husband is being very understanding regarding this though. He’ll watch the dogs and give me my 30-60 minutes of alone time. Which is appreciated, because I know it’s not their fault I’m irritable. I’m sure he’s secretly afraid of me though. He’s the kind of guy that doesn’t do well communicating feelings and if there’s a teary eyed woman in sight he clams up and bolts the other direction. So I’m sure he appreciates that I get my “me time” alone ;-)

It’s coming up to being the last month before our little girl decides to make her appearance and I’m getting antsy. I can’t wait for her to finally come into the world but I am freaking out about the labour and delivery aspect of it. I think it’s more the Type A personality coming out of me. Not knowing what’s going to happen and not being able to have any control of where or when it’s going to happen is a little hard for me to comprehend and it’s hard for me to relinquish control. I know I’m going to have to trust that everything will go accordingly but until the moment I go into labour I’m probably going to worry about it.
My prenatal Doctor asked me the other day how I was doing now that I was coming close to the finishing line. I responded by saying “the last 6 weeks of pregnancy are definitely the most unsexiest and the most difficult time of pregnancy.” I’m sure I’m the size of a juvenile elephant and I’m just going to get bigger. But it’s hard to feel confident or sexy in your own skin when you feel like you should have your own pilot car following you around when you need to go somewhere ;-) I know it’s all temporary and I know I won’t regret anything once we have our baby in our arms, but leading up to that moment it’s difficult.

Saying that, it’s getting more and more uncomfortable to do pretty much anything. I find I’m up at least 12 times every night from rib, back, hip or muscle pain. If I had to guess how many hours of sleep I get it would have to be between 3-5 hrs every night. On a positive note, I’m getting use to functioning without sleep for when our baby girl arrives :-)

I'm finally knitting up some baby knits for our little girl. Hopefully there will be some progress pics shortly!!

Updating the Stash...

I had a bit of free time yesterday so I decided that since I had to take FO pictures of my Sunnyside Cardigan I would take the time to update my stash. I had gotten into the bad habit of putting my acquisitions in my Rubbermaid containers without documenting them. Soooo…..46 stash pictures later!!

Usually I have a bit of a stash parade when I add beautiful skeins…..but I think we can agree that me posting 46 skeins of yarn on the blog is a slight overkill. I will show a couple of my favorite skeins though:

Swan Island Pure Blends Fingering in Oatmeal.

Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere in Slippery Trail.

A Tanis Fiber Arts Thrummed Mitts Kit in Sand and Chestnut.

Sweet Georgia Yarns Superwash Sock in Wanderlust.

Sweet Georgia Yarns Tough Love Sock in Knit Social 2012.

I also bought enough Tanis Fiber Arts Yellow Label in Frost, Seabreeze, Tidal, Peacock, Cobalt, Lemongrass, Shadow and Midnight to make 1 of each from the Coolbreeze Collection by Tanis Fiber Arts.

Aside from updating my massive stash, I actually did take FO pictures of the Sunnyside Cardigan I knit for little baby Alexandria. Friends of ours had a baby girl on Christmas Eve. We share the same prenatal doctor so when I had my Dr’s appointment on Christmas Eve and was told that my Dr was on his way to the hospital to deliver a baby the first thought that popped into my mind was “ I wonder if Carmen’s gone into labor”. And truth behold she did go into labor. Little Alexandria is a complete angel. Once we met her about a week later I knew immediately knew I wanted to knit her something. I used a skein of Opal from The Woolen Rabbit in Blush. It’s a 2012 Woolen Rabbit Club colorway that I’ve been holding onto forever but it was the perfect match. I knit the 6-12 month size. Then little Alex will get some good wear out of it. Since babies have a tendency to grow like weeds.

I learned my lesson from knitting for my cousin’s newborn 2 years ago. Kylie had outgrown 2 of the 3 sweaters I knit her within the first month. My gauge was a little loose but the sweater was still SUPER soft from the Merino, Silk, Cashmere blend. I really loved working with this yarn. The subtle color variations are beautiful.

I also made a bit of progress on my Un-named Baby Blanket. I’m just doing random stripes with the purple as the back ground. So far I like how it’s coming along.

Pattern : Cery’s Baby Blanket
Yarn : Tanis Fiber Arts Yellow Label in Purple Punch, Buttercup, Frost and Lemongrass

I’m debating doing the lace edging from the Tweed Baby Blanket by Jared Flood. I guess we’ll see how it progresses then I’ll make a decision on the edging.

Until then I'll keep plugging along :-) It's a great mindless knit.

Somethings Going On Here...

Mr Peanut can't figure out what's going on .... But he likes to use my belly as his personal pillow in the mean time :-)

Knitting To Ward Off...

I feel like I’ve been running around like a crazed lunatic since Christmas.

My sister and brother loved their knitted Christmas gifts but they were crazy jealous of the socks my mom got as her Christmas gift. So…both were quite adamant that they wanted a pair of socks each. I was then forced to do a bit of damage control. Which required taking out my FULL Rubbermaid containers out of my spare bed room. So my brother and sister got to go through all my sock yarn and choose a skein each. This required quite a bit of time. I don’t think they knew how much sock yarn I had. My sister ended up picking out a skein of Just Merino Sock in Melodramatic from Dragonfly Dyewerx.

My brother on the other hand had a hard time choosing his skein of yarn. Apparently he hit the Trekkie Holy Grail of nerd yarn when he came across my 3 skeins of Star Trek yarn that I purchased from Pandia’s Jewels. It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. He was in full geek out mode. Apparently he wanted me to knit him a pair of socks in Resistance is Futile……

 

and if I have time he wants a pair of socks out of the Illogical skein …..

and the Beam me up skein.

So he wants 3 pairs of socks. That’s going to take a while.

I decided to start by casting on my sister’s pair of socks. I didn’t have a set pattern so I ended up casting on toe up and working a 72st sock in 3x1 ribbing. It’s moving along and I’m hoping to cast off the 1st sock any day now.

Although it’s not the only thing that I’ve been knitting along on. I’ve also casted on a Sunnyside Cardigan by Tanis Lavallee. I’m using Opal in Blush from the Woolen Rabbit.

It’s going to be a gift for friends who just welcomed a baby girl on Christmas Eve. She’s a complete sweetheart. I’ve casted on the 6-12 month size so she’ll have time to grow into it.

Although all this knitting is not what I’m stressing about. I’m in full on nesting mode. I finally got my husband to clear out the last of his stuff out of the room we’re going to be using for a nursery. He also set up the crib after a bit of bribery. Apparently he was under the impression that he was going to try to get the nursery set up when I went into labor. That was not going to work for me. So now that the room is cleared out I have migrated all the baby stuff I’ve bought over the last 6 months into the nursery. And I’ve still got a list of stuff we need. Although I’ve knocked off quite a bit the last couple of weeks. I’m a big fan of the store, Once Upon A Child. I’ve been picking up gently used clothes, bouncers, receiving blankets and more for ridiculous cheap prices. So far the only new items we’ve purchased so far is a nursing glider, a fleece car seat bag, nursing pillow and a Stroller Travel System (with built in car seat). Other than that I’ve purchased everything else used or it’s been given to me. I still have a bit of time yet. My due date is March 2 but I don’t want any of this stuff left to the last minute. The Type A person inside of me wants everything taken care of ASAP so I can focus on other things.

It’s a good thing that I can decompress from all this stress by knitting away… If I wasn’t a knitter right now I might be slightly homicidal ;-)