Where did my knitting mojo go?

I've lost my knitting mojo! I have no desire to work on any of the projects sitting next to the couch right now. And I've got so many things on the needles that I don't want to start another one. I did go look at my stash though just in case something popped out at me and I didn't even see anything I desperately wanted to knit. I think I just need to soldier on and finish some of these projects. Maybe if I clear a bag or two away from the clutter next to the couch then I'll feel more in the mood to knit. I think I'll start working full force on the nursing shawl and try to get that partway done. I think my problem is that I don't have anything mindless going on and I'm not so great at keeping the concentration going right now.

Say Cheese!

Here are the pictures I promised, along with some pictures of my new obsession!

First off lets have some pictures of the baby's room filled with stuff! It still needs a rug, a dresser, and a bookcase. We're going shopping for a rug this weekend and I may break down and get a cheapo dresser and/or bookcase. I really wanted to save up until we could get a nice one, but our driveway is in major need of paving and we're gonna have to save for that first. Anyway, here's the little girl's room:
Then we have all the handmade stuff I got at the shower and in the mail afterwards.
First the blankets from Grandma and a sweater she crocheted:
The blanket from Aunt Glory:
The tie dyed onesies and sweater and hat from Aunt Val:
The quilt from Grammy:
Then we have my new obsession, SPINNING! Val gave me a lesson on spinning and plying on a drop spindle while I was visiting and I'm obsessed now! I had a drop spindle and a bunch of roving but couldn't get the hang of it, I'm still learning, but I'm getting much better. I spun a bit while I was visiting, but here's the first thing I spun at home:
I had 3 small things of roving in different colors that I'm using as my practice spinning before I move onto the big bats of roving. I started the second color too:
This one is weird, it feels like I'm holding a bunch of someone's hair, it's so smooth. There's also a light brown that I have to do then I'll decide if I want to ply 2 together to get a bit more length or just ply them to themselves to keep an even color.

Don't worry, there's still more pictures. This was the craft that the guests did at the baby shower:
My mom and I dyed the clothes the night before then people drew on them with markers and crayons. Apparently once you iron the crayon on it becomes permanent.

And now for the best thing about being a stay at home wife. . . PUPPY NAP TIME!!!
Cooper has been keeping me, my sweetie, and Trapper up the last few nights from about 11 to 3 am. He runs around the house whining at another dog down the street that barks his head off all night. He also likes to bark at anything he sees outside like raccoons, squirrels, deer. Last night we had to close the bedroom doors to keep him from running up and down the stairs and then close the windows and blinds to finally get him to settle down. Needless to say, we've all been a bit tired and exhausted the last few days and around 3pm we have puppy nap time. I've never really been one for naps, but this is the best part of my day now!

The Final Trip

Well, I'm back from my last trip I'll take for the next 3 years that I won't have to worry about car seats and bottles and diapers. All in all it was a good trip. The only bad part being that I was sick. Just a little head cold but enough to knock me on my butt for a few days. If only I could have taken a sudafed to relieve the pressure in my head. I was close at one point to take one despite being told by the doctor that no decongestants are allowed. The baby won out and I dealt with the headache and all the other pleasant cold symptoms. I unfortunately don't have many pictures to share from my baby shower because my nephew had my camera and I forgot to tell him to press down half way to focus first so most of the pictures look like this:
But it was a blast. It was probably the worst day for my cold so I was feeling pretty miserable and then I think having clogged ears messed with me a little and I was getting car sick just getting to the place so I wasn't in the best of moods at first, but how can you feel miserable when all those presents, I mean people, arrive! We got so much good stuff for the baby. Lots and lots of little baby girl outfits. I shipped all the small stuff home and all the big stuff had to be returned and bought again at my local-ish Babies R Us. I've already put most of the stuff away and assembled everything that needs assembly. Except for the high chair. I figure I don't need that until she's a few months old anyway, but I may do it anyway since the playyard was missing pieces and I'm worried if the high chair is and I wait 5 months to even take it out of the box then I'll never find the receipt and be able to get the missing pieces. Plus I just like putting stuff together, I feel like I'm actually don't something to get ready for this kid.

So, some of the highlights of presents were everything from my sisters and mom. My mom made a gorgeous quilt in bright pinks and greens. Gloria made a pinwheel blanket in pastels. Valerie tie dyed a bunch of onesies and made washcloths, a hat, and a sweater out of yarn she dyed. Another highlight was a seahorse teether, I don't know why, but I love it. And one of my mom's friends that I've known my whole like put along with her present a framed picture of me when I was 6 or 7. My sweetie took it and put it on our dresser already. I promise I'll post pictures of all this stuff soon, I've just been so busy the last 2 days catching up with housework and finding home for all the baby stuff.

During the shower we skipped all the silly games and did a craft instead. While I was opening the presents, everyone was decorating clothes. Some came out pretty good. I can't quite do it justice in writing so you'll have to wait for pictures.

Here is a picture that I've been meaning to post for a while, the latest February sweater:
You can never make too many of these!

So, while I enjoyed spending many an hour on the couch cuddling with this little thing:
It's nice to be back home.

Stay tuned for pictures of lots of baby stuff in a few days!!

I'm Off to See the Wizard. . .

Not really, but it feels like I'm about to leave Kansas and not see Aunty Em for a long time! I'm leaving the house, my sweetie, and the pups for 10 days!! I left them a week ago to go to the wedding, but it was just for 4 and a half days and it was only the second time I had left the pups since we got Trapper almost 2 years ago. My sweetie is very good with them and takes as good of care as he can, but he does have to work full time so he can't spend every second with them like I do. To add insult to injury, we're going to have our first Ohio heat wave. Not too hot, about mid 90s for the next week or so. We're still not sure if the AC works or not. I really hope it does cause I don't want my boys roasting while I'm gone! I turned it on for a few minutes today and the outside unit turned on and I felt some pretty cold air coming out of some of the vents, but I didn't leave it on long enough to see if it actually cools the place down. It was low 90s today and we didn't have any problem keeping cool in the house as long as I kept all the windows and doors closed. I think the money we spent on insulating the attic is starting to pay off already! Plus the canopy of tree cover keeps the sun off the house almost all day, great for conserving energy in the summer, horrible for trying to get a garden to grow!!

So, off to New York for the week. I'm going to have my shower (yay for baby stuff!) then I'm going to vegetate for a week on my parents couch and eat pizza, bagels, and italian food (they just can't get any of those things right in Ohio) then I have my very best friend's bridal shower, then I go home. I'm hoping to get some knitting time with my sisters and some time with my niece and nephew, but my sisters work and the kids will still be in school. I'm sure I'll manage with sitting on the couch and knitting and reading!! My mom wanted to take time off and go to NH for a few days so I could see what they're doing with my Grandpa's house, but I told her to save her time off for when the baby comes cause I'm gonna need some help!

On the knitting front, I just finished another February Sweater, this one for my college friend Jenny, so I need to find a new small project to take with me to NY. I'll be taking the nursing shawl, but that's a lace project and I need a no-brainer to work on as well. I think some stash diving and cruising of my ravelry queue is in order for tonight!

And just so we're not completely picture free this blog post, here's a picture of the baby's closet:
I put away all the goodies I got when I was in Virginia and all the other stuff I've bought so far. I felt like I bought so much, but put away it looks like nothing! The little cubbies on the left are meant for shoes so they're a bit to small for most anything, but I did manage to fit the burp clothes and mittens and booties in there. There's another closet right next to this one that has 2 rods for hanging clothes. Right now all my clothes that don't fit me and my sweeties old uniforms are in there, I'm thinking of clearing it out and putting a closet organizer thing in there. I'm also thinking that my sweetie and I need a walk in closet in our bedroom since our closet now only holds his stuff and I'm gonna need some closet space if I ever fit back into my clothes! He's not so convinced of that though! I think I'll just get a quote from the contractors when they do the windows and secretly save up money (although there are a million other things we need to spend our money on right now, like paving our driveway that is quickly becoming part of our lawn!)

OK, that was some massive babbling. Can you tell I'm tired and bored?! My next post will be post baby shower so get ready for some intense cuteness!

Home at last!

OK, get ready for a long one, but there are plenty of fun pictures! It's been an eventful week here. A neighbor stopped by early in the week with a present for the baby:
You probably can't tell the detail here, but it's little embroidered flamingos!!! Wednesday I left for a wedding in Virginia for a good friend of mine. I was one of the bridesmaids.

The trip started off great with a few flights that let me get lots of knitting done. I finished my section of a charity blanket for the Stitch It! Podcast listeners group.
It's called Tip Toe Through the Tulips, so I did a bright tulipy color. I did the yellow basketweave part. It's on its way to the next knitter and I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's done.

Wednesday night was the bridal shower, then Thursday I took the opportunity to visit some people from my lab from grad school and was greeted with a familiar sight:
AHH! The drawbridge was open for almost 30 minutes and I didn't even have knitting or a book with me. I had a great visit with everyone from the lab though. And then I went off to visit my neighbor from when I lived in VA. She's preggers too so we had a good baby chat while we went for a walk with her son. And she gave me a gift for the baby, how cute is this:
It's an orange outfit (she said I'll be overwhelmed with pink at the shower and she wanted to be different. . . it's greatly appreciated!!), and a teether that plays music. The teether was immediately tested by her son and was given rave reviews!!

Thursday night we had the bachelorette party. I went to dinner with everyone then out to the first bar for a bit but then had to call it quits for the night at about 10 cause I really needed some sleep and people started smoking.

Friday was our day to spend with the bride. She took us (some of the bridesmaids) out to get mani/pedis (although I skipped that part and knit in the salon cause I hate people touching my feet!), then we all went out to lunch where we had a very impromptu baby shower. The bride gave me this:
It's a package of cloth diapers, some bath towels with mermaids and other sea creatures on them, and 5 organic cotton outfits (hopefully you can see it on the center one - there are ruffles on the butt!!) Then from the girl I was staying with I got this:
She had gone to a baby boutique shop and got a growth chart, a bunny blankee, a burp cloth with the baby's first initial embroidered on, a silver spoon and a pair of booties with a bunny on the front and cottontail on the back. This baby is already so spoiled!!

Friday night we had the rehearsal dinner. I seemed to have overdone it on Friday and woke up Saturday with enormous feet! I hadn't had a problem with swollen feet yet this pregnancy so I didn't have a clue what to do. I had to rush around Saturday morning getting my hair and makeup done, but once I got to the church I spent an hour or so with my feet elevated. I didn't do much good though so we had a little shoe emergency and I had to borrow someone else's shoes and then tie them with a ribbon to keep them on my feet! It was quite the extravaganza! But the wedding went off without a hitch and the two most disgustingly in love people you will ever meet are now married!

Here's me and my Virginia friends. I look like a whale, but what do you expect from a 27 week pregnant lady in a maternity bridesmaid dress!

I got home from my trip to discover a few great packages. One was a few stuffed animals for the baby from my Aunt. The next was the stroller and car seat we registered for from my mom's Aunt and cousin. And the last was the bouncy seat we registered for. I immediately assembled the bouncy seat:
It has to be stored in the crib because Trapper quickly got over his fear of this new thing once he saw stuffed animals hanging from it. He slowly walked up and stared at it for a long time, then tried biting the zebra but couldn't grab it, it was like watching kids play bobbing for apples!

This morning I assembled the stroller and car seat and played around with them a little, I forgot to take a picture. It's great, I can fold the stroller up with one hand!! I'm going to wait another month or so then I'm going to figure out how to put the car seat in the car so the dogs can start getting used to it.

Well that's all for now. No new knitting news, I did about 4 rows on the nursing shawl in the salon and that's all I got done the whole trip! I'm seriously knitting deprived right now and I really want to cast on some major project, maybe the Starsky jacket.

Oh, and as of last Friday, I am officially in my last trimester!! The baby is gonna be here in no time. Get ready for many posts about back pain, trouble sleeping, and swollen feet!!

IT'S DONE!!!!!!

My longest running UFO, my sweetie's baseball sweater, is finally off the needles. Pieces are seamed and all ends are woven in!!! The other day I had all the pieces knit and was ready to start seaming.
I had a minor freak out thinking I wouldn't have enough yarn to knit the collar since all I had left was less than a quarter of 2 balls in that color. But I wound up having enough for not only the collar but also for seaming the sleeves. This morning I finished all the weaving in of ends and had a grand plan for this masterpiece.
I was going to wrap it up and leave it in the baby's crib. I will be out of town on father's day so I was going to call him and tell him to go look in the crib. I was going to have a card that said something along the lines of "time to get used to handmade presents". But I just couldn't wait. How can I work on something so hard and then wait a few weeks to see if it fits and then not even be there when he tries it on for the first time.

He came home from work today for lunch and I just couldn't contain myself. He said he really likes the way it looks and that it fits him great. The best compliment was that he said "Yay, now we don't have to buy sweaters for me anymore"
He did laugh at me though when I told him I started this almost 2 years ago when he left for Iraq. I'm gonna let that slide since he did give it rave reviews. We'll see how he likes it when he actually wears it for a day. I'm hoping the cotton doesn't stretch too much.

Knitting Gift Baskets

I've been watching tons of baby shows the last few months and I see these people leaving the hospital with lots of flowers and I think what a waste. Yes, flowers are gorgeous and they definitely brighten someones mood. But you just had a baby and you're no longer pregnant, you're in a pretty good mood already. Wouldn't it be better is people could send you a knitting basket! I woke up at 3 in the morning and just couldn't get the idea out of my head. There are a few places that you can order knitting themed gift baskets, but not like ordering flowers. I wish people could just go online and find a new baby girl knitting gift basket that had pink yarn, a pattern for a baby sweater or a book of baby patterns, needles, some baby themed stitch markers, and maybe a little already made knitted toy for the baby. I think I'm on to something here. But how to get them delivered to hospitals all over the country, that's where I hit a snag. I think I need to develop this idea further. Although it probably already exists and I just couldn't find it online.

Normalcy Returns

Life is returning to normal today with the arrival of my sweetie at 1am and the departure of the bunny babies. First off the bunnies. . . this morning I woke up and too the pups out in the front, then I went to check on the bunnies and they were gone! No signs of a predator, they were just gone. I waited until about lunchtime and kept checking on the nest to make sure they weren't just exploring a little, then released the hounds. They were so happy to be in the yard again and so was I!! Here's a picture of the bunnies from a day or 2 ago:
It's 2 bunny butts and a bunny leg. They started hopping deeper into the nest when I started taking pictures.

My sweetie returned a day early from his work trip to China. Everything seemed to go ok, but more importantly he came home with gifts!!

First there's these little ceramic things. They put them on his pillow at the hotel symbolizing the stone pillows people used to use. There's a much better story than that on the card they left with them, but it's all the way upstairs and I'm tired today!
He got a set of silk sheets and pillowcases. They're going on the bed tonight, although Trapper has already shown a bit too much interest in the tassels.

He also got us a nice set of chopsticks with the little blocks to rest them on. We do enjoy using chopsticks whenever we can so these will go to good use.
A little something just for me, a silk purse. I think he did a fantastic job of picking out a simple fabric for me. He said there were ones that looked a lot more like traditional Asian designs, but luckily he didn't choose one of those cause that's not my style.
And last, but definitely not least, a present for the baby! I had a bit of a panda obsession before I decided I wanted to be a marine biologist. Maybe it's something I can pass along to the baby.
That's it. No knitting updates yet. I keep forgetting to take pictures of my sweetie's sweater. I'm probably more than halfway done with the sleeve now so I'm really hoping for a Father's Day finish!

We lost one

We lost another bunny last night, this time to a natural predator of some sort and not my dog. I'm hoping that the last 2 make it out of the nest ok.

Almost done with the front of the baseball sweater. I'll take some pictures when I am.

BUNNIES!!

This will probably be a long post, but these little bunnies have consumed our life this weekend so they're pretty important to me!
FRIDAY NIGHT:
It all started Friday around 7pm. Cooper starts barking and whining in a way that I've come to know means "Hey, there's something living in my backyard, let me out to go chase it!!!!!" I look outside and see a bunny sitting in some ivy under a tree, no biggie there, that's a pretty regular sight around here. But it stays there for a good 5 minutes and isn't scared away by Cooper barking. At the time I realized that wasn't normal, but didn't think too much of it. At about 11pm I let the dogs out for the last time at night, it was pitch black due to lots of clouds and absolutely pouring. Usually Cooper will just stick his nose outside, feel the first drop of rain, and decide he'd rather hold it until the morning, but Friday night he bolted outside. A few minutes later Trapper comes in and Cooper is still no where to be found. I look out the windows and see him under the tree, then I see he's jumping around and pawing at the ground. I send my sweetie out in the rain to see what it is cause at this point I know Cooper's caught something. He goes out and said it looked like the ivy was alive. He thought at first we were infested with rats, but then I told him there was a bunny there earlier in the day and so it's probably baby bunnies. Since it was pitch black and pouring, there was no much we could do without risking stepping on lots of little guys.

SATURDAY MORNING:
We wake up and go outside to assess the damage. Cooper had dug up a nest of bunnies just like we thought. 2 were a couple feet from the nest and didn't survive the night in the cold and rain. One was safe and sound in the nest. We searched the ivy and found one a few inches from the nest. My sweetie picked it up and it didn't look like it was breathing and it was cold, but it didn't look as bad as the ones we knew didn't make it. He held it while we looked for more and then he jumped cause he started kicking. We decided to bring this one inside to warm it up them we'd bring it back out with the others. As we went to go inside my sweetie almost stepped on a second bunny. This one was about a foot from the nest, but had more cover than the other one. It started moving a little as soon as I picked it up, but it was very cold. So we brought that one in too. We put them in a shoe box with fiberfill to try to keep them warm and put them in a closet away from the dogs, who never knew they were in the house!
We also put some fiberfill around the bunny in the nest since it was now all by itself and we couldn't built the nest back up because everything was soaking wet. My sweetie grabbed a handful of leaves and spread them out on the concrete so they would dry and we could use it to cover the nest later.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON:
The bunnies in the closet seemed to be doing better and responded to being touched and were moving all over the box, although still laying on their sides and not sitting up like the one in the nest. We decided it was time to put them back with their brother. We went outside and removed the fiberfill from the nest, put the 2 bunnies back, and covered the nest with the now dry leaves. We also put 2 twigs across the nest in an X. We read that the mother bunny will only come at night and only stays for 5 minutes at a time, so to see if a nest is abandoned you need to put 2 sticks across it and see if they're disturbed the next day.

SUNDAY MORNING:
We go outside to see if mama bunny came to visit them during the night and the sticks were exactly as we left them! We didn't know what to do and we were expecting another day of rain. We felt horrible about leaving them out there knowing they hadn't eaten anything in 2 days. I called the local wildlife rehabilitation clinic and left a message, but no one got back to me. We figured the best thing to do would be to leave them out another day and hope the mama came back. If there was no activity by Monday morning we would take them into the clinic. My sweetie went out and built the nest up a little more knowing we were expecting some pretty heavy rain during the day and we hoped for the best.

SUNDAY NIGHT:
Around 6:30pm Cooper starts going crazy again!!! I run to the window and see mama bunny sitting on her nest. She was there for about 10 minutes she seemed to be sitting still and feeding them for a while and then she started rebuilding the nest. She came back again at 8pm and hopefully a few times during the night. Hopefully this means the bunnies will make it. There's only one down side to them, I can't let the dogs in the yard until they leave the nest. Back to walking them in the front yard on the leash. They're very confused by this and keep whining at the back door. I'll get a picture of the bunnies in the nest if the sun ever comes out again.

On the non-bunny front. . . My sweetie left this morning for China. He'll be there for the week for work. I'm hoping to get lots of knitting done while he's gone! I've been working on his sweater non-stop for the past few days and have managed to get 16" done on the front. I need to do 17.5" of stockinette before I get to start shaping and using my brain again. Hopefully it won't take too long to finish and then I have one more sleeve and the collar. I'm so excited to get this thing of the needles and see if it actually fits him!!