Something New

So I've been knitting away here and there on a few mindless stockinette stitch projects and making a few baby things as gifts, but I have a confession to make: in the last few months, I've been trying a new craft. I have learned to cross-stitch, and I'm not ashamed to admit it!

Well, ok, it is a little (lot) geeky, but when I geek out, I take it all the way.

Project The First:



This is my first-ever cross-stitch project. It says "What little girls are made of" underneath which are the four nucleotides that make up DNA. I used a sweet font from Hard Core Stitch Corps and figured out the nucleotides based on pictures I found online.It isn't perfect up close, but I like the colors and am generally happy with how it turned out.


Project the Second:
I was absolutely bitten by the cross-stitch bug and started a rather ambitious sampler (for a beginner). It is based on the one on the cover of "Cross-Stitch Samplers" but about half-way through I decided that it needed to be tinkered with a bit. First of all, I wasn't stitching my name smack across the front of the design, so that had to go. Then, I wanted to chose a more entertaining quote. It now says "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." That big tree in the middle is the Whomping Willow and the three animals (soon to be four) are a werewolf, black dog, stag and a rat - Mooney, Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail. Yep, it's a Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban cross-stitch sampler. It still needs the rat to be added, and the stag looks a bit too much like a goat and needs redone.

Project the Third

I'm allergic to wheat and make this recipe for cornbread all the time. There's always a few cornbread muffins in my freezer for emergencies. Yes, I have cornbread emergencies. Really. So despite having made this recipe over and over again, I still don't have it memorized. Now, it is hanging in the kitchen right over the counter so that I never have look it up again.

Yet Another Project:

I've become interested in combining the traditional with the modern, with playing the medium of cross-stitch against a non-traditional message. I stumbled across cross-stitched QR codes and was smitten. I found one that I really liked that read "Home Sweet Home" and was decorated with a lovely blackwork border. I wanted to make something like that. I decided to use the square QR code as the main part of a little house and then stuck the flowers and such around it. It really does scan with a smart phone and "Home Sweet Home" pops up on the screen, but it's fussy. I should have used three strands of thread instead of just two.

Current Project:


So I used three strands of thread to make this QR code, which is destined to become a birthday card for my brother. It says "IT'S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY." For those of you who spent your childhoods in more constructive ways than in front of the Nintendo, this is a Zelda joke. There's a guy who gives you hints throughout the game, but sometimes you find him a fantastic secret passage to the guy, and all he says is "IT'S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY."

Housekeeping

Well, apparently a collection of knitting patterns is considered spam in these parts.

The page where I keep my knitting patterns was deleted on me because, apparently, it had been flagged as "spam." Or possibly, as I suspect, Blogger is trying to remove the abandoned blogs that are clogging up their memory banks by 'accidentally' flagging them as spam. It happened to my other blog, the one full of baby photos. Most annoying.

So.

I'm working on getting the page restored, but in the meantime I have been converting my free patterns into Rav downloads. I believe I have successfully formatted and uploaded four patterns:

S(p)ock

Felted Cloche

Jacana Shawl





Little Rugged Raglan

Wow, That Went Fast

I thought I'd just posted, like, a few weeks ago. Entire months seem to have vanished.

That kind of sums up life here at the SongHouse. Having a baby in the house again makes whole days just evaporate. Before my first was born, I read a quote about life with babies: "The days and nights may seem eternal, but the weeks will fly by." Totally. Really, it feels like one very, very, very long day. And since the baby isn't sleeping through the night yet (she was doing well for a while but cutting two teeth in a row is impeding our progress), my work shift never seems to end; I just get longer rest breaks during the night portion of my shift.

Which is to say that my enthusiasm for anything that takes more than 15 minutes from start to finish is scarce just now. Which means that not much knitting is getting done.

I miss it. I miss being able to hold a thought in my head long enough for it to connect with other thoughts. I liked it when "We're low on kibble" would bump into "I started a grocery list" and would result in putting in writing the fact that the cats are 36 hours from starvation. Or whining and getting underfoot or something.

On a completely unrelated note (snort) I have started drinking coffee again. After walking easily away from it more than 8 years ago, I have remembered that a little caffeine in the morning, and a little more in the afternoon can make such a difference in my mood and my ability not to walk into stuff. I know that the baby is getting some of the caffeine I take in, so I can't over-do it. And I am annoyed by the irony of the fact that at the stage of life when I most need caffeine, I am least allowed to indulge.

There are still little bits of time during the day in which I could be knitting, but I can't or don't want to put the energy into a pattern that requires a lot of concentration, and the brainless patterns put me to sleep. And it's springtime in Canada, and I want to revel in the fact that I won't need wool socks or warm sweaters again until fall. And no, I don't want to be reminded that it went down to 10 C (50 F) at night two nights in a row this week. Permit me my fantasies, won't you?

Actually, I have been knitting a little. I've been trying to knit my bit. My mother lost a bit to breast cancer not long ago and I found out that if you don't have group health insurance (she does) and have to pay for a prosthetic out of pocket, it is something like $500 for a proper silicone prosthetic and two special bras. Crazy. So I've been using up little left-over balls of yarn and making tit-bits. They're fairly quick, and it's real, useful charity knitting. I appreciate the sentiment of making blanket squares or mittens for people in need, but wonder if there isn't a more "bang for your buck/hour" way to help than by knitting. But the tit-bits are useful, easy to make, cheaper than the regular prosthetics, *and* are an act of kindness. So I've made up a half-dozen bits to donate to the cancer clinic at my local hospital.

Some day I'd like to make up some chemo caps to donate, too (I made a couple for my mom, but no extras). I went with my mother to one of her early appointments and she showed me the cupboard full of things for patients to take if they want them - books, used wigs, some medical supplies, and a few donated chemo caps. But the caps weren't of a style that I can imagine anyone wearing. The one that stood out most in my mind was crocheted out of chunky-weight acrylic yarn that looked non-too soft, and was orange. Crossing-guard orange. The only way that thing was going to improve anyone's day was if they got a laugh out of it. Or sewed it shut and turned it into a basketball. I do appreciate the work and the thought that some dear soul put into this creation, and I don't consider myself to be an expert in good taste, but I think I could come up with something that someone might at least consider wearing.

Oh, and I did finish my olympic knitting - on time even! I changed my mind about the yarn, though. The natural stuff was a bit too rustic (er, scratchy and rough) to hold for long hours on a deadline, so I went with some softer orange stuff. Love the pattern (Mr. Greenjeans), but don't like how much the ribbing pulls in. I will eventually undo it and try again with a different stitch pattern.

It's Official!

I have signed up for the Knitting Olympics on the Yarn Harlot's website. After much deliberation*, I have decided to make Mr. Greenjeans.

My first thought was to make something with the lovely alpaca yarn I have been sitting on for more than a year now. But I started swatching and it really wants to be knit up on 3.75 mm needles, and it also really wants to be something cabled, like Fiona Ellis' Celtic Icon sweater. But the thought of finishing it in 17 days makes me short of breath.

I started rooting through my poor, neglected stash and came across some locally-produced naturally coloured wool in a respectable aran weight. I swatched, and got stitch *and* row gauge specified in the patter. I took this as a sign. Also, I really like the fact that the pattern is top-down, so if I'm especially short on time (and especially keen on finishing before the flame goes out) I can shorten the sleeves or body a bit to make the knitting go faster.

As much as I'd like to make a DK-weight sweater covered in complicated cables, it's just too much this year. I'm nervous about even getting Mr. Greenjeans done before the deadline. As a SAHM, you'd think I would have some spare time here and there, but not so much. My days are fairly peaceful and unhurried (most of the time), but I spend a lot of time with my 4-month old in arms or in my lap, and my 6-year old chattering away at me. Spare time (with both hands free) is unpredictable, at best, and a project that is simple is not only easier to pick up and put down, but if I don't have a chart to follow, it's one less thing to lose as said project gets moved around.

To those of you who are attempting more complicated projects than this, my hat is off to you. For those of you who are attempting simpler projects with as much trepidation as I am, my hat is off to you as well. Go teamofyourchoice!

*Really, if I spent as much time knitting as I did deliberating, I could have a whole sweater (or at least a sleeve) finished already. But I can browse Ravelry with one hand while bouncing a baby on my knee. It's much harder to knit and hold my squee one at the same time.

The Good News...

We welcomed a beautiful, healthy baby girl to our family back in September. She is sweet and contented and a reasonable sleeper at night. And she's the perfect excuse to make such sweet little confections as these:


Pink cashmere bunny hat on purple lace baby blanket

Baby version of Alice Starmore's iconic St. Brigid Sweater

Smocked baby dress with leaf-edged hem and matching mary-jane style baby booties.

The bad news is that all of these things were made long before Baby's arrival. Since then, my list of things I want to make for her (quick before she's old enough to have an opinion on what she should wear and I can dress her however the heck I want) has grown exponentially, but my knitting time has shrunk down to little, wee baby-sized quantities.

I did manage a little Christmas knitting. I made three chunky-weight scarves of modest size, and made a worsted-weight toque for my husband, which I finished just in time for New Year's. So there is hope that someday I will find time to use up all that pink yarn that found its way to my stash just after that ultrasound tech first guardedly said, "Well, it appears that it is more likely that you are having a girl."

I am, however, finding myself on the computer more often. I can now type, with painstaking slowness, with one hand, and I have learned to run the mouse with my left or right hand. Which means that I'm spending more time on Ravelry, something that is not exactly reducing the size of my queue.

Now, if you will please excuse me, I'm going to try and do another row or two on a pair of baby booties before she outgrows them.

T-Minus Three Weeks

...and counting

A Silent World

I have some health problems that mean that my ears, at their very best, aren't perfect. Usually, my minor hearing loss (about 80% of normal most of the time) is just a little bit annoying, and not a major inconvenience. Once in a while one or the other of my ears will become blocked for a day or two, but it isn't too difficult to adjust. It just means paying more attention.

But for more than a week now, both ears have been quite blocked. I noticed that the room has to be very quiet with no background noise before I can hear my computer mouse click. If the radio is on, even at a fairly low volume, while I'm driving, I can't hear the turn signal ticking and find myself checking again and again to see if I have remembered to put on the turn signal. I've noticed that I like driving all by myself this week because I can really turn up the music (to about 8 instead of 4) and, for a few minutes, it feels like I can hear again.

It's been a mixed blessing not being able to hear my kid very well. His whining and squealing and sound-effects and general 5-year old noisiness doesn't bother me nearly as much, obviously. But I didn't realize how much I relied on audio cues to figure out if he was behaving himself. I can't tell where he his by the sound of his footsteps. I can't hear the cat meowing desperately from the other room when he's got her in an over-enthusiastic hug. I can't tell the difference between the other cat making a small noise in this room, or my son making a big noise in the next room. And I can't identify sounds nearly as well, like, say, the all-important difference between plastic and glass/ceramic/metal hitting the floor.

Our main floor is L-shaped, which means that most of the time, I can see what my little boy is doing. The problem is when he's around the corner, or he's "snuck" upstairs. A couple of times, I couldn't see him and called loudly for him to tell me where he was, only to find that he was just on the floor on the other side of the big easy chair - two feet from me.

I can still hear the cordless phone ringing, but I can't tell which direction the sound is coming from. My husband's cell phone was ringing from, I thought, it's charger in the kitchen, and I was waiting for him to go and answer it. Then he reached over me and picked up his phone - from the end table right beside me in the living room. I wouldn't run to the kitchen to fetch his phone and bring it to him (I'm not running for much of anything these days!), but I sure could have passed it to him when it was within arm's reach.

I can't knit and watch tv at the same time anymore because I'm relying too heavily on the closed captions to follow the dialogue. Even if I'm home alone and can really crank the volume, the sound is still mushy and distorted.

It's been a bit of a zen-like experience, all this quiet and minimal conversation. I remember reading about a meditation retreat where people go without talking for 10 hours a day for 10 days. This is feeling like the beginner's version.

I'm feeling disoriented and disconnected. I'm feeling awfully anti-social. It's hard to hold a conversation with someone when I can only make out half of what they're saying. I've been spending a lot of time on the computer this week. It's been nice to have just that little bit of communication that feels "normal." Boy, I hope my ears clear soon.