Introducing...

Ailish Grace

Hello, Knitbloggers! Am I not adorable?

Born May 17th at 11:50 am and weighing 7 lb 8 oz and 20.5" long.

Ailish (the "Ai" is pronounced like the a in acorn and "lish" like in delicious) is the Celtic form of Elizabeth which means God's promise. She's our little miracle baby and overcame quite a lot on her journey here!

We're all doing well. It was a 3.5 hour labor and we both recovered quickly. Bryan has taken 2 weeks of from work to help, which has been a wonderful gift for all of us. Owen is taking his newfound status of big brother incredibly well! He's very gentle with his little sister and loves to help pat her back and gives her lots of kisses on the cheek. As of yet there haven't been any jealousy issues but Bryan and I have been careful to make sure that Owen gets lots of extra love and attention right now. I'm sure that soon Owen will tire of the new houseguest and make his opinion known, but for now we're enjoying this time.

We spend a lot of time like this.

Not surprisingly, there hasn't been much knitting going on. I started a hat for Ailish at 3:00am on the 17th and finished it shortly before we left the hospital on the 19th. I also started some Trekking socks and after 9 days of knitting I'm very happy to say that I have almost 4 inches done on the first cuff.

Sweet baby girl has just woken up and is calling for me. Perhaps with the next update you might even get a picture of knitting!

Hospital time!

We're off!!!

Silly, Brianne!

Remember in my last post that I said I was only about 4" from being done with the sleeves? I was so wrong. I was 4" from being done with the increases on the sleeves, but still had sleeve cap shaping to do. It's not all that terrible, but 4" of increasing one stitch on each side, every other row on size 5 needles means that I've been doing a lot of adding stitches when I'd rather be decreasing.

Last night I finished the increases and now (finally!) today I get to start the sleeve cap shaping. With any luck I'll be blocking the pieces tonight and can do seaming tomorrow as well as picking up the five hojillion stitches around the front.

Yesterday was really exciting and a little scary! Bryan and I had an OB appointment and found out that I'm already dilated to 2cm. I kind of stared at the doctor for a minute in shock. When we got out to the car Bryan looked at me and said, "Oh my gosh, we're actually having a baby."

The doctor is pretty darn sure that I'll deliver baby girl before the weekend. It's a race against the clock, people!!!

Happy Mother's Day!

This was my Mother's Day gift to myself. I finished the Manos Cotton Stria wrap on Saturday and it was washed and blocked and ready to wear on Sunday morning. That beautiful thing that you see with it is my new shawl pin from Designs by Romi. I ordered this on Monday afternoon and it was in my mailbox on Friday afternoon. Impressive, because she lives in CA and even with shipping Priority Mail it takes a few days. It came in a lovely box for storage and a handwritten card that thanked me for the order. This pin is the Figure 8 Sterling Pin. I may need more of these.

Pattern: I'm not even going to claim using a pattern because I changed everything about what was written on the paper. I won't, however, say that the pattern was my own. It's 12" wide and 62" long.
Yarn: Manos del Uruguay Cotton Stria, color 225, 5 skeins
Needles: KnitPicks Options, size 6 US
Date Started: April 18, 2007
Date Finished: May 12, 2007

Now here is something really odd. I only have one project on the needles right now. The UnGranny Smith Cardigan. And I don't really know that I have the urge to cast on anything new. In reality, I'm only about 4 inches away from both sleeves being done and once I have all the pieces blocked and the fronts and back seamed together it's just a matter of doing the edging on the front and then it's done.

This baby is due May 30th. Think I can have the cardigan done by the time the baby is born?

Really?

It has been said before. Just because you can knit something does not mean that you should.

Case in point: the knitted bow tie

Anyone else have any prime examples to share?

5th time's the charm!

I finally had success with the baby socks. The first time that I cast on for them I put 42 stitches on the needles. How many stitches did I end up with on the final pair? 28 stitches.
These are so cute and just about the fastest things to make. Ever.

Pattern: Mine
Yarn: an itty bit of leftover STR mediumweight in Watermelon Tourmaline, as gifted by Sarah
Needles: Size 1 US metal dpns

I took these pictures last night so you'll have to forgive the color because it really looks nothing like this.

And another finished sock project for you...
Pattern: Slip Stitch Rib socks from Sensational Knitted Socks
Yarn: KnitPicks Memories: Smores, 2 skeins
Needles: Size 2 US metal dpns
Date Started: April 21, 2007
Date Finished: May 3, 2007

I like the way that the slip stitch breaks up the ribbing on the cuff. I'm not sure about the yarn, though, because I've only worn these socks twice and I'm already seeing noticeable felting on the sole of the sock. Has anyone else seen that or am I just really hard on hand knitted socks?

A work in progress...
This is the Manos Cotton Stria that I bought on sale at Simply Fibers, which is being made up into a very simple stockinette wrap with a 4 stitch garter edging. This is the project that sits next to the bed and I work on it for a few minutes every night. It's my winding down project and with miles of stockinette you can see why.

I'm into my fourth skein of yarn and have one more to go. The "pattern" that I'm using, and I use that term loosely, says to use 2 buttons to keep it closed. I originally liked that idea but over the course of working on this decided that it most certainly does not want to have buttons. Nope. It wants a shawl pin.

And so I've ordered one. (It's the one on the top right.) Normally I wouldn't order something like this for just one project but then I got to thinking about the UnGranny Smith cardigan and how I can use the shawl pin on that. That led me to remember my Hopeful wrap that I keep at work for when the decide that it needs to be 47 degrees in the office... I'll be bringing that home this week and the shawl pin would work perfectly on that, too. So I'm seeing several wonderful uses for this shawl pin. Now if only I hadn't seen the sweater sticks.

RIP

I've spent most of the past couple of nights starting projects only to RIP them out after an hour or two. May they Rest In Peace.

The focus of my attention has been baby socks. Surely this little girl needs to have some hand knitted socks, especially from her Momma who always has socks on the needles. We had a yarn swap on Friday night and Sarah gave me some leftover Socks That Rock in the Watermelon Tourmaline colorway that is perfect for this!

Perhaps I should learn from my experiences here and therefore make my life so much easier, but I'm determined that I don't need a pattern for this. I've made over a dozen pairs of socks and the basic pattern is rooted deeply in my mind. I can wing it, right? Apparently not, because I've now made 4 first socks to the point of being able to kitchener the toe only to realize that the sock I've created could almost fit my 3 year old.

Part of my issue is that I've forgotten just how big... erhm, small... little baby feet are. I could try to judge it based on what I'm feeling from all this movement going on in me, but I'm pretty sure that that's not accurate since she doesn't have feet the size of her Dad's.