Back from SLO…

Matt and I had a great weekend in San Luis Obispo. Tons of pictures to show off. In case you’re wondering, the belly is in full force. The song, “she’s a brick… house”, goes off in my head every time I look at these pictures so be kind:)

We drove up on Thursday and stayed at the Cliffs in Shell Beach which is south of San Luis Obispo. Nice little beach town but tons of fog these past 4 days. I don’t think the fog burned off at all on Friday but most days by mid-afternoon, the sun came out to play. Every room had a balcony and we had a view of Avila Beach from ours. Our room rate included a full hot breakfast and wine/cheese hour in the afternoons. Unfortunately we didn’t partake of the wine except for one day. Don’t worry, I had small tastes of wine. Just enough to wet my tongue.

I purposely picked Thursday so that Matt and I would arrive in time for the world famous San Luis Obispo Farmer’s Market. For those who have never experienced the farmer’s market in SLO, it is unlike any other farmer’s market you may have gone to. For one thing, it’s huge! It takes over Higuera Street which is in Downtown. Of course, farmers come to sell their vegetables and fruit but other vendors come to sell stuff like food and skin products, clothes, photography services. People also perform at the farmer’s market. We saw a choir from the Philippines who were participating in a singing competition, a belly dancing troupe, and a rock climbing wall. Matt had never seen anything like it.

Me buying some extremely sweet organic peaches that I promptly gobbled up.

Matt eating an extremely large shish kabob.
San Luis Obispo is also home to “Bubble Gum Alley”. An extremely unsanitary sight that will delight children of all ages. I don’t know when this started but my gum from 15 years ago is up on that wall somewhere. Just don’t ask me where.

The next day, Matt and I wanted to take some belly photos so we headed to the most logical place. Wineries. LOL… We stopped off at Eberle and Peachy Canyon wineries in Paso Robles but we got the best pictures on the side of the road next to a clearing with trees planted to look like hearts. We did pick up some wine in case you were wondering. Great wineries, both of them.

Baby Double’s debut at Eberle winery.


This one was taken at Pismo Beach after all the winery business. We waited for sunset.

One of the few pictures with both Matt and I.

So of course, I couldn’t leave SLO without checking out the LYS.

It’s called Yarns at the Adobe and it’s the cutest little shop ever. Right across the street from the Mission Church. I couldn’t believe it, there were at least 5 LYS’s in SLO county. They weren’t there when I lived there. Of course.

Here’s what I walked away with. Two skeins of Panda Soy. I’ll make socks with them. I’ve decided to buy sock yarn on vacation trips so I can remember the trip.
You can tell it’s a college town by looking at it’s list of classes. LOL

One last fun thing that Matt and I did was have dinner at the Madonna Inn. It is one wild pink trip. I will not give you my opinion but will let you make your own when you see the pictures.



This is the world famous waterfall urinal in the men’s restroom. The women’s restroom is not as entertaining.

This place is covered in rock. Color scheme was pink, pink, and more pink. With some cream and gold mixed in. A full band played big band music that night and people got up and did the tango,swing, and other ballroom dances. Matt and I resolved that for our 5th anniversary we were going to be able to come back and show them how it’s done.

Well, enough pictures. I was going to show you some knitting content but that can wait until next time. Way too many pictures for you to digest. Have a great week!

My first EPS sweater

Of course, it’s for my baby. I wanted to knit it in a small cute size first where it wouldn’t bother me to frog it if necessary. I knit on it for about six days and this is what I came up with.

Here’s the stats
Yarn: 1 skein of Berroco Comfort in green. Love this yarn. Especially for baby things.
Pattern: EPS which is found in a number of Elizabeth Zimmermann books. Kinda difficult to come up with numbers if you’re lazy (which I was) or math challenged. I finally sat down and made up a size for my baby. Hopefully, it fits. It’s about 15 inches in circumference. Arm length 5 inches. Yoke depth 3.5 inches. My gauge worked out to 5 stitches/inch.

For those of you who are Waldo fans, here are a few pics of him modeling the baby sweater. It barely fits him.

Here’s Matt holding me up so you can see the detail

Blurry pic cause I was moving

This is what I really think of this sweater.

As for my next projects, I’m still working on the Hanami stole. I am using the Malabrigo Laceweight in pink. (this stuff is crack for the lace knitter.) I’m so glad I have two more skeins in purple to make another shawl. I am also going to start some Baby Moc-a-socs. Aren’t they adorable? I also have the Itty Bitty Hat book by Susan B. Anderson. So many cute hats but I think I’m going to have to start out with the Marshmallow Bonnet. Do you think it will work for a boy? I have some leftover Cottonease in Almond that I think would look super cute. I guess if it’s too girly and I end up with a boy, I can give it to one of my co-workers who’s having a girl.

I went to the grocery store today and got some pregnant comments. One little girl who looked about two years old, pointed at my belly and proclaimed to all that were listening, “Baby in there!” She was so cute beaming ear to ear. One thing that I wish I did was take more belly pictures. I was taking them from about 15 weeks to 20 weeks. But unfortunately, I wasn’t really showing so I stopped. All of a sudden, I popped out at 24 weeks and now my waist measures 36″ at the belly button. And of course no pictures to record my transformation. A journal with waist measurement and pictures would have been a nice thing to show my baby. So… Now I’m looking for a professional photographer to take some tasteful pictures of my belly. I hope it’s something that my baby will appreciate later. Has anyone else done this before? If you have and you have a suggestion for a local San Diego photographer, please leave a comment.

Finished “August Baby”

I have  few pictures of my finished “August Baby” sweater.  I’m very pleased with this sweater.  It was basically seamless which is imperative for a sewafobe like me.  Just two seams right under the armpits.  The lace pattern was very easy to memorize and I have to say the sweater came out absolutely adorable.  If you don’t agree with the first few pics, check out the ones that feature Waldo.




I used a skein and 10 yards of Berroco Comfort that I had leftover from the Big Bad Baby Blanket that I made earlier in the year. Buttons were purchased from JoAnn’s. I love that place for buttons. Tons to choose from. I have been meaning to check out As Cute as a Button which is in Point Loma but they don’t have regular storefront hours and I never know when I’ll make it down there. Poor Waldo had this look in his eyes “Please, mom… take this sweater off me.” As soon as I took it off, he ran for the back door.

I got a set of steps for Waldo to use to get up on the couch. He’s been having trouble jumping on the couch lately and I don’t want his back to give out. It’s been a struggle getting him to use the steps but I think he’s finally getting the hint that he needs to use it.

I was at the grocery store this morning and a woman said to me “I bet you’re anxious to have that baby soon. I was so uncomfortable, that I wanted that baby out as soon as it could come out. You going to get induced?”

Ummmm… I replied, “I like being pregnant. And no, I am not going to get induced.” Thankfully, I was able to recover my wits and be courteous after that. I wonder why some women think all pregnant women are having a bad pregnancy and just want to be done. I actually like being pregnant. I can now feel my baby move and kick. That’s a trip. And since I look obviously pregnant now, people go out of their way to be nice to me. I am now working 24 hours a week at work. (Actually, this is a bad thing for my income but if I didn’t have to worry about money, this would be a plus.). My skin looks good. I haven’t gained all that much weight and I have no stretch marks. I am excited for my little one to come but I’m not going to hurry things along with unnecessary intervention. And I don’t have any “war” stories to trade with anyone else. The only pregnancy “complaints” that I have are that I get full very easily and am hardly ever hungry and that I could sleep all day if left to my own devices.

Well, I’m off to Knitters Anonymous at Yarning for You then my prenatal yoga class. For all you preggos out there, I highly recommend the class to help with any back pain you might have.

A few baby things to look at…

I finished my Tiramisu baby blanket! The pictures on Ravelry made it look like this blanket was much more challenging than it was. It is basically single crochet with a shell edging but I think it looks so elegant. The pattern is available for free. Look it up on Ravelry if you don’t already have it downloaded. It’s a great beginner crochet project and I think I’m going to keep crocheting. Fun, fun, fun…

Here are a few pictures for you.

Of course I had to get one of Waldo modeling the blanket.  Notice he isn’t so mad as he usually is.  Blankets are a bit easier for him to tolerate.

Stats
Yarn: Lion Brand Cottonease in Almond, 5 skeins. I actually only used a tiny bit of the 5th skein. I did enlarge the blanket by 10 stitches so that it was a tad bigger. So… If I didn’t do that, 4 would have been sufficient.

Hook: Clover ergonomic size H.  I am a tight knitter and crocheter so I actually went down 3 sizes.  Whatever works for you.

Pattern: Tiramisu Blanket.  If you couldn’t tell, I love the pattern.  And it’s actually a manageable baby size.  Yeah!  I’m so glad it didn’t turn out gargantuan like the EZ blanket did.

Since that project was done, I started another baby project, the Febuary baby sweater by Elizabeth Zimmerman.   She gives more directions than she did for the baby blanket that I knit before so this is coming about splendidly.  I cast on for it on Saturday and am almost to the point where you do the garter stitch edging and knit the sleeves.

Sorry it’s been so long.  I just having had any FO’s to blog about.  I have to go to my OB appointment so thanks for stopping by.

Crocheted scrubbie

Here’s a few pictures of scrubbies that I made over the weekend. A woman in my fiber group crocheted these a few weeks ago and I decided that I needed to crochet some now. I had bought Crochet Today Mar/April a few weeks ago but got the Peaches and Cream yarn from Joann’s on Saturday. Lo and behold, I got totally addicted and this is the result.

Waldo as always looks so agreeable as my scrubbie model.

I’m still working on casting off my Feather and Fan shawl. It involves a crocheted cast off which when you have thousands of stitches is hell. Hopefully, I’ll have a picture at my next post. I picked out my next baby project. It’s the Tiramisu baby blanket and it’s crocheted. I guess I’m on a crochet kick right now.

The baby’s moving!!!

I’m so excited to be feeling movement.  I started feeling things stir around in my belly in the past 2 weeks but chalked it up to other gastro functions.  But now I think it’s my baby!  My belly is now starting to look pregnant and I have to button my prepregnacy jeans underneath my belly so I’m just wearing maternity pants now.   I also started feeling some sciatica pain in my left butt.  So I signed up for a prenatal yoga class and the pelvic tilts and cat/cow move that I learned in class really helps.

The baby is feeling more and more real to me everyday.  I can’t wait for the baby to be here so I can love it.  But that means I need to start investigating car seats and strollers and all that kinda good stuff.  If anyone has any suggestions of brands that they loved, please let me know.

I started knitting my baby a “Little Lillie’s Sweater” by Cottage Creations.  I’ve knit 2 of them before for babies of friends and decided to knit one for my baby.  It’s out of varigated green Berroco Comfort that was gifted to me by my friend,Jen I think Berroco Comfort is awesome for baby knits. Soft, economical, and comes in crazy yardage. So I’m going to name this piece the leprechaun jacket. Or maybe St. Paddy’s Jumper. Or Mint Julip. It’s almost finished. Just one sleeve left to do. So I’ll wait until the knitting is done to show it off.

Have a great week everyone!

A never ending blanket…

I started this blanket way back on January 10, 2009. It was a few days after my first prenatal appointment and I wanted to have a receiving blanket for my little one. I bought 4 skeins of gray Berroco Comfort and used the pithy instructions of Elizabeth Zimmermann to start this blanket. It ended up much larger than I anticipated. It’s a full 50 inches square. Much too large to use as a receiving blanket or car blanket for the baby. I’ll use it to tuck my little one into his or her crib. I encountered a problem with the blanket as I was nearing completion of the first square.

I was running out of yarn!!! OMG… I used 3 of my 4 skeins on the first square. In a panic I ran back to Yarning for You and found that they did not have anymore gray in the dye lot I bought previously. So I high tailed it to Common Threads in Encinitas. They didn’t have the dye lot either so I decided that the other squares needed to be different colors. I picked jewel tones of dark red, blue, and royal purple. It is my opinion that these colors will work for either sex. Although, I have this feeling that I am going to have a girl.

The knitting went on for months. Miles and miles of garter stitch. But all in all, I think the blanket came out beautifully.

Here it is full size on my patio table.

Up close view of the garter stitch.

A close up of the color transition.

I am actually quite proud of this project.  Although I think of garter stitch as incredibly boring, it is also incredibly complex looking.  This project took a lot of stamina for me.  Normally a project this long would have resulted in me putting it away and working on something else.  Also, I think I finished the blanket well.  The seams barely are noticable.  EZ calls for a provisional cast on with a 3 needle bind off at the end so the knitter only has to weave in ends.  I missed that whole provisional cast on bit and decided that I would just seam it using a whip stitch.  And it still came out well.

I am almost sorry that this project is done.  I said almost.  As I knit this blanket, I kept thinking that each stitch in this blanket represents love for my unborn child.  And at my last stitch, I thought “Wow, I must love my baby a lot.  There must be thousands of stitches in this blanket.”  So… for my future baby.  I love you.  So much already that I can hardly wait until you get here.  I have many hopes and dreams for you and look forward to sharing the love I have for your daddy with you.  You are so wanted as this blanket can attest to.

I do plan on knitting or crocheting another baby blanket.  But one much smaller.  The next baby project is “Lillie’s Little Sweater”.  I’ve made two for other babies and want to knit one for my own.  I still have other projects waiting and I am going to finish those up this week so you’ll see them in a later post.

18 weeks + 5 days!

Matt and I went to the doc today for our mid-pregnancy ultrasound. He figured out that my baby scans well and we might as well do it now. Here are a few pics to see. They are in 4D and we were able to see the baby move real time. How cool is that!

Of course the original pictures look much better than these scanned images. I’ll be bringing them to the next meetup for all my knitting buddies to see.

Stats:
The baby is measuring 3 days bigger than originally estimated. I only gained 1 lb but my doc isn’t concerned as long as both me and the baby are doing well. I don’t understand though. I feel so much bigger. Oh well. The baby weighs 254 grams and as my doc said “It measures spot on”. I go in for my next appointment in 4 weeks. Hopefully, I’ll be bigger and have more of a belly then. I just feel bloated.

S.E.X… (among other things) at Stitches West

Stash Enhancement Expedition. Come on, people… get your mind out of the gutter. I attended Stitches West sans hubby.

I had a really good time at Stitches West. It was my first time and although I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, I think I would have had more fun with a few knitting buds. Every knitter I knew here in San Diego couldn’t make it. So… I just started talking to other knitters and had a great time talking yarn and projects.

I forgot my camera at home so you won’t see any pictures from me of the actual event. Oh well, I’m sure you’re seeing other people’s pics all over the blog world. I got in on Thursday morning at 11 am and had lunch with my old college roomie Michelle. She is a non-knitter who learned how to knit before I left. She works in Santa Clara, literally 1 mile down the road from the Santa Clara Convention Center. The convention center had free parking. Yeah!!! and I pulled into the garage at 3 pm to get registered. I wanted to see if there were any spots in other classes that I was hoping to take. But alas, nothing tickled my fancy among the open classes. There was a market session class that I wanted to take but the ladies at registration told me that I would have to wait until the market preview to register for those classes. The market session classes were 1 hour workshops that were held on the market floor. They offered instruction in Toe Up Sock cast on (which is what I ended up taking on Friday), Seaming, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I can’t recall at the moment.

The market preview started at 5 pm on Thursday and I wanted to make sure that I made it to that. It was an absolute zoo. There was one booth that sold discounted yarn in packs of 10. That was the most frenzied I’d seen knitters get. Granted, there were some deals to be had. On some bags, it was 60-70% off. Women and men were digging frantically into 3 huge bins filled with bags of yarn. Customer service was not the name of the game at this booth. Scoring big deals was. So… I found 3 bags of yarn that I almost bought. Almost because I stood in line for 30 minutes without any movement. Then my friends started calling at 6 pm to go out for dinner. I decided that if this yarn was here tomorrow, it was meant to be. I mean, I had only gone thru 10% of the market at this point. How could use my budget to buy this when something else spectacular could be calling my name. So. I threw the bags back into the sea of yarn and knitters and headed out for dinner. I would be back bright and early in the morning to check out the market before class.

My friends took me out for dinner at this Mediterranean restaurant in Mountain View. Very good food although I couldn’t remember the name of it for all the money in the world right now. Pregnancy forgetfulness has taken over at this point. My friends want to go out and have drinks and I have to tell them that I would rather pass out on the floor or couch at one of their houses. So we head back to my friend Ben’s house for a movie. Unfortunately we end up watching “Don’t mess with the Zohan”. This is a politically incorrect movie that was probably funny but I passed out before Zohan made it out of Israel. My friends tell me he ends up in the US. Don’t know how far into the movie I fell asleep but apparently it was very close to the beginning. Oh well.

The next day, I set out at the bright and early hour of 10 am for Stitches. I was staying over at my friend Michelle’s house for the weekend and she lives in Mountain View. About a 15 minute drive especially at the non traffic hour that was was up. So… I wandered around the market for 2 hours until my market session. I found the Webs booth and found their yarns on closeout to be a much better deal than the Zoo booth. So I bought some Rowan CashCotton DK and some Malabrigo Sock yarn. It was my first time ever buying Malabrigo Sock and I found it yummy soft. I fell in love with a brown color, Cordovan, that I was thinking would be a very smart Clapotis but I am not sure whether I could take another turn at Clapotis. It was brutal knitting it the first 2 times around. Here’s a looksie.

My market session was highly successful and I conquered the toe up cast on. We learned the figure 8 cast on and the Turkish cast on. We also tried the Judy Becker Magic Cast on but that was way too complicated for me. This class enabled me to finish my first toe up sock which is going to be for my baby. I used some left over Happy Feet from my Monkey sock. I have one Monkey and one baby sock to complete.

Here’s a pic of my Monkey and baby sock together so you can see the size difference. Isn’t the baby sock absolutely adorable??? I just used a figure 8 cast on with a short row heel and ribbed the foot and cuff.

My next class was “Stuck on Steeks”. I had tons of trouble following along and after the class I remained “Stuck on Steeks”. I did manage to cut a steek but I’ve come to the conclusion that steeking isn’t for me. I don’t know if it was the way the instructor taught the class or if pregnancy brain was to blame but it was an exercise in futility. The instructor didn’t demo the skills before hand. She described the skill and then went around and corrected people. After she described the skill, I had no idea what to do and had to wait until she came around. The whole thing didn’t want to make me try a complicated fair isle sweater then cut it to make a cardigan. No siree… I’ll stay the course and knit flat.

After the class was over, I was exhausted and went home to rest for a bit. My friends wanted dinner out again so we went to a Cuban restaurant. Sooo good. I had black beans and rice and a tamale. It came with fried plantains. Yummm…. I ate too much though and had horrible heartburn the rest of the night.

On Saturday, I took a break from Stitches since I didn’t have any classes scheduled. My friends and I just hung out and watched Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood. Good movie. Very un-PC. Set in Michigan with a look at immigrant gang life and what it does to middle America.

Sunday was my last day and I had an 8 am Hairpin lace class. I checked my class confirmation and realized it was with the same instructor I had in my steeking class. Ugh… but I’m glad I gave it because I was actually successful with hairpin lace. I’m not sure if I’ll use the technique for projects but it was fun learning the basics. After the class, I hung around the market to find out if I won the $1000 grand prize. In case you’re wondering, I didn’t win. But I participated in more S.E.X. My husband was not pleased. Here is a picture of the damage.

In addition to the Malabrigo Sock and the Rowan Cash Cotton, I have some Rowan Silk Cotton in a light blue, a skein of Socks that Rock Lightweight, 1 skein of MadelineTosh sock, Colinette Jitterbug, a shawl pin, and another set of Addi Turbos Size 1. I did get to play with the Addi Turbo interchangeables and was extremely tempted to buy them but I might wait until next year. This is the first year they are out and are probably still working out any bugs. I didn’t particularly like the cord as it isn’t like the fixed Addi’s but the click feature was down right cool.

I also bought a pattern for a stole and skein of 100% silk in a natural shade. I got this from the Yarn Barn. Who knows when I’ll find time to knit it…

And for you Waldo lovers out there, here he is looking as snug as a bug in a rug.

I can barely contain my excitement… Stitches West, Here I come!

I think the title says it all. I’m leaving for Stitches West in Santa Clara, CA on Thursday and coming back on Sunday. Yippee!!! I’m a Stitches virgin so I’m sure I’ll have tons of pics and stories to share. (Hopefully, that last sentence won’t attract unsavory types to leave me comments.) I’m super excited for the Market of course. But I’m not going to go overboard. My plan is to just buy things that I can’t otherwise get at my LYS or easily online.

I’m taking 3 classes, a hairpin lace class, steeking, and a sock class. Fun stuff. I didn’t want to overwhelm myself with classes. For those who haven’t perused the Stitches site, you can take 24 hours of classes in the “Works” option. I thought that might be a bit much especially the first time. It might have been fun to do that many classes if I had a buddy going with, but I don’t know anyone else who is going. Luckily I have friends who live in the area who I can hang out with when I get out of the convention center.

Look forward to a full report next week complete with pictures!