Where's the pause button?

For my life, that is.

So, Mr. Ninja and Mr. Munchkin are finally home. Their return trip took two days longer than expected. They were supposed to be back on Monday, but ended up finally getting home yesterday afternoon. (In total, it was 52 hours of travelling to get home from Texas.) According to Mr. Ninja, it's very liberating travelling with a four year old who speaks his mind. My little guy is apparently very good at launching virulent tirades against "stupid fricking airplanes".

As a result of spending entirely too much time in the wretched environment of modern aircraft, my poor little guy's immune system is in total crash mode - he's got a fever, cough and cold and is currently voluntarily laying down on the couch and watching DVDs. If you've ever met Mr. Munchkin...you know that this is bad. I'm worried - he's usually never in one spot for more than 20 minutes at a time.

(Side note: I just asked him if he wanted more to drink - I'm slipping him a mickey of pedialyte and apple juice - and he said all he wanted was hugs and a nap on the couch.)

Wish us all luck getting through this...relatively unscathed.

I'm starting to freak out a little bit - I'm trying to convince myself that we're ready for the new baby...and yet, somehow failing miserably. Everything's in place, the linens and new clothes are washed, and the bags are packed. However, there is this looming shadow in the back of my mind that says "YOU NEED MORE KNITS". And dang it all if the spectre ain't bang on.

Of course, it's the nesting instinct that's driving me mad...while the boys were away, I kept myself quite busy trying to soothe the savage beast.



I hemmed three pairs of pants for Mr. Ninja, sewed seven pairs of pants for Mr. Munchkin (but I need to add pockets now - thank you *so* much for reminding me, Steph), sewed a tiny pair of footed overalls (Ottobre pattern), knit a pair of Little Turtle Knits longies (when I finish the second leg I'll post a pic of the FO), a pair of the ubiquitous Saartje's Booties, and then schemed, planned and shopped online for fabrics to make sweet girly dresses.

Also sewed up some wool and velour newborn pants from the Little Comet Tails Crescent Yoga Pants pattern - I'd show them to you, but they're in a strawberry kool-aid bath right now. LOVE this pattern. Once I had it figured out, I made a pair of these pants in less than 15 minutes from start to finish.

What I'm panicking about is newborn sized soakers. I've only knit one (the Curly Purly pattern in BFL) and I'm not terribly enthused about it. So, I'm trying to decide if I should sew up some or if I should knit...and I'm torn. Send help please? I think that I need at least three more to be safe. I have no more brain cells to spare on debating this subject with myself. The baby is going to be very smart, because she's sucked out all of my neurons.

Got some lovely surprises in the mail this week:



Stitch markers from Purly Whirly and a knitted new baby set from some friends in Germany! The stitch markers are lovely, and a totally unexpected thank-you for the Advent giveaway. Thanks so much, Amanda! As for the baby set - I hope that someday, somehow...my knitting will look this perfect. My stitch tension has always been off-kilter, and I long for the mad knitting skillz that would let me produce such perfect stitches. Oh well...everyone's gotta have their little goals in life.

Fun with kool-aid!

So awhile ago, I decided to experiment with dyeing some yarn with kool-aid. I was intrigued by someone who said on the Ravelry kool-aid dyeing group that they had good luck in getting a gradiated effect in their dyeing by winding a ball of yarn into a centre-pull ball and then dyeing that. I tried it...and it wasn't so much gradiated as it was splotchy. (You can't really see that from the photo.)

So, I tried overdyeing it with another flavour (glacier ice berry).

Love the effect. And of course, knitting karma kicked in...and I ran out of yarn. So, I dyed some more...but of course, I forgot which blue I overdyed with, and which one I used originally. So, my toes don't match. Ungh. Oh well.

But the socks are warm and comfy. Love, love, LOVE this Henry's Attic stuff. Kona heavyweight rocks my world, and not just because it's superwash and knit up into a pair of socks in 4 days of knitting. It blooms beeeeautifully, and is uber squishy.

The cables are wonky, but I don't care. I'm planning on wearing these during labour...so I'm ok if they get a little scary.

My next experiment went much better - I wanted a red baby hat, as the rest of the new munchkin's "coming home" outfit is red and white. So, I grabbed some alpaca from Pacafiesta a few years back, and tossed it into the microwave with some tropical fruit punch kool-aid. Ewwww, the smell of cooking llama is unpleasant, to say the least. But it took very nicely.

And resulted in this:

Of course, upon finishing...I realised that I had cursed myself, as there was no way that a kid of Mr. Ninja's would have a head that small. *cringe* I grabbed one of Mr. Munchkin's mini soccer balls, and wet blocked the hat to within an inch of its life. Hopefully, it'll be big enough now.

In other news, we're all a little down right now. It was a weird day of ups and downs. Mr. Ninja's grandfather passed away rather suddenly this morning, so we're scrambling to get him and the boy down to Texas in time for the funeral. (I would go, but am not allowed to fly at this point in the pregnancy.) I will miss him dearly - he was one of my favourite in-laws and the sweetest man. We're thinking of using Jamie as a middle name for the baby (Grandpa's name was James)...I just hope that no one in the family objects to the idea, because I'd really love to remember Grandpa in that way. But we'll see, I suppose.

Also, I went for a "check-up" ultrasound at the hospital today. (I swear, I've been at the hospital so many times in the past month the receptionists at the prenatal desk already know my name...) Anyhoo. Turns out that we will be having...



















a baby girl! It's a total surprise for all of us - we were convinced that the baby was a boy, but nope - it's a very healthy little girl! I'm a little in shock...but delighted that I get to knit and sew up sweet little dresses and other girly things now. Eeee! I'll get a chance to use up all of the ribbons in the house! (I, uh ... have a closet dedicated to ribbons. But my Mum gave them to me, I swear!)

So, like I said. A weird day.

Busy hands.

I've been trying to keep my mind off of how out of control my life has been feeling by crafting like a madwoman. Here, take a look.






From the top - the Henry roving is all spun up. I just have to set the twist, and then I'll be working on making that into a kickass pair of socks. A couple of fabric snap boxes a la My Little Mochi (best tutorial ever), and a baby gift for a mama on one of the boards that I frequent.

There's a few other things that I haven't taken photos of: a pair of socks for me, a pair of Saartje's booties in some leftover Sweet Georgia in purple, and another spinning project is on the wheel. I don't know...I've just been feeling lost without something to craft for the past few days, hence the crazy level of output.

ETA: Oh yeah, forgot to take pics of it before I gifted it, but my new next door neighbors just had a baby girl. So I made an emergency diaper bag out of denim (your typical drawstring backpack out of denim scraps) and filled it with a turned and topstitched burp cloth out of flannel (with doggies on it), matching swaddling blanket, a decorated onesie (I made a little patch out of a scrap of the fabric that I used for the burp cloth/blanket and sewed that onto a store bought onesie), a trial tube of Weleda diaper cream, and some disposable diapers and wipes. (They're not into cloth, otherwise I'd have made a diaper too.) So....busy, busy.

Bleh.

So far, 2008 is not boding well. This is going to be a somewhat random post, as my mind is completely scattered these days.

1) Was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Thank goodness I'm 34 weeks along...not much longer. (3 weeks and the baby's "ripe", but 40 weeks is where I'd like to be when I do eventually have this baby. Not bloody likely that I'll make it that far, as Mr. Munchkin was early and this baby is a little bigger than he was. Cross your fingers for us.) But I must say, I dislike the whole "making myself bleed" part. I need my fingers for knitting!!!!! And those lancets sting, man.

2) Knitting has been coming along slowly. I had to discard the idea of Anastasia, as all of the yarn that I want to work with at the moment just doesn't suit the pattern. I have an inkling that there are two reasons that my knitting output has dwindled - first, because I've been in panic mode trying to get things organized for the baby and the second reason is that I've started three different pairs of socks and ripped all of them out for one reason or another.

I've gotten one knitted FO done this week, though.

It's a Little Turtle Knits soaker, size small. It looks enormous, but maybe that's just me psyching myself out. (Yes, I am quietly freaking out over here. Thanks for asking.)

So at the moment, I'm knitting rather boring cabled socks - will post pictures later, as I'm using the yarn that I dyed twice with kool-aid, and I'd like to dedicate a whole post to that process.

3) I've gone on a bit of a sewing bender. As part of the process of getting ready for the new baby, Mr. Munchkin and I went through the several boxes and bags of his old clothing and diapers. We sorted by size and re-bagged and re-boxed everything that was too big. Mysteriously, I can't seem to find any of his old onesies (diaper shirts) or burp cloths. So, what better way to justify stash diving? So far, I've sewn up flannel 30 burp cloths and am slowly buying all of the cute onesies that I can get my hands on. Will post later, if I can get my fat ass up the stairs. No, I'm not being facetious...the stairs are a serious PITA, as my lower back has been threatening to shimmy out of place if I so much as bend over to pet the cat. Ugh.

Sorry about the grumpalicious nature of the post, but I'm just about ready to evict the squatter and reclaim my health back. That is all. Will be back eventually with sunshine and daisies. Ok, now I'm being facetious. :P

Not the best way to start off a new year...

I was sitting around in the hospital today, waiting for them to take blood samples. (Pregnancy related - I needed to have a second glucose test done). But I did get a fair bit of knitting done. Note to self - make sure that the nurses take blood from the fingers that are NOT needed for knitting. Owie.

On a happier note, I love getting backlogged mail. This arrived today, as did some more diaper making supplies.

The Plumknit yarn is cashmere. I just want to drape the skeins around my neck and go out like that...it's beautiful, soft and lofty as hell. I was thinking of making myself the Bird in Hand mittens with it, but now that it's here...I've reassessed, and judged that it's way too nice to use for mittens. A scarf is a more likely target, methinks. And the Yarn Pirate is mine, all mine! Socks, socks, socks! I love the YP club. That and the Funky Carolina (which I flaked out on signing up for this session - doh) clubs were the best ones that I joined last year.

Here's my first FO of the year:

I started this around 1 am on New Year's Day. Insommnia sucks, but at least I'm getting good stuff out of the wasted hours. It's a cute little lined bag, based on the tutorial from here. Easy and quick, the only reason that I didn't finish it in the same session that I started it was because my ironing board was covered in cat hair. (It needed a wash something fierce, ever since my SILs cat adopted it as his favourite napping spot.)

Also finished off is:



The baby's small size diaper stash. (Well, finished as long as I can resist the urge to make more of these - they're so wee and little and cute and squishy and ... well, you get the idea.)

I whipped this up last night - it's for one of the ladies on the Diaper Sewing Divas board - it's a NB fitted from the Darling Diapers pattern. I think I'll be making a few of these for our babe, it's a good pattern. Holy snaps, though.

A heads-up about the giveaway - I mailed out all of the packages that I had addresses for a few days ago. I was hoping to avoid getting any of them caught up in the pre-Christmas postal madness, and thus to minimize the number of lost packages. But I'm still missing the addresses of a few winners: Kerry&Erin, Tara and Linda. Please contact me at theninjaknitter at gmail dot com if you're still wanting to collect your prizes, people!