What a Life!

Introducing…my latest masterpiece.

Well, maybe not “masterpiece.” I’m driving myself crazy doing and re-doing parts of the knitted things that I’m making. The perfectionism is driving me crazy (did I just say that twice?), but I can’t seem to get over it. Agh!

The yarn for this little cardigan is the first thing I ordered after we found out we were haivng a little girl. The yarn is $22/skein (go ahead, count the colors, add it up) so I could only afford a kit (which was a fraction of the price, but still…). The little cardigan originally became popular back in the summer of 2007 after the Yarn Harlot posted about her addiction to knitting them. But the craze has died down and kits are not as easy to find as they once were.

The Yarn Harlot and the other 801 little sweaters knit from this pattern that have been posted on Ravelry all followed the pattern, save one or two. If you look at the Yarn Harlot’s, you’ll see a Seed St border topped with an i-cord. That was nice, but it seemed a bit plain to me. I wanted something, well, more feminine.

So I thought and thought (i.e. agonized) over what to do. Then it occurred to me that I could do exactly what I did on this cute little sweater (which was gifted to my niece).

I haven’t asked my sister how the sweater worked without an official “closure” (no buttons or anything). Perhaps I should mention it to her in case I might want to add something to mine.

Nevertheless, I love the border, and I love how it looks on my little sweater too. Much better than the Seed St and I-cord, me thinks. And I love it much more than what I paid for it!

With all this talk about baby knitting, one might think I have forgotten that I have two charming boys to knit for as well. Actually I haven’t forgotten about them. I’ve been planning things for my little girl and buying yarn (and fabric) for projects for her, but I’m still finishing up knits for my boys that I started before we found out we were expecting a little girl.

I’m making a pair of cardigans for the boys to wear this coming winter, as is my usual custom (though this year I didn’t wait until August to decide on a design and order the yarn). I did the colorwork for Ben’s this weekend (shown above). Before that, there really wasn’t much to photograph.

This pattern is from an self-published designer, and I am one of the first to knit the pattern. There were some technical errors that I found by editing it before I started knitting, but there are also some design short-sights that I’m coming across as I go along. I’m for sure going to redo the dark blue portion after the colorwork, but I’m debating redoing the colorwork as well.

And yes, I spent most of my knitting time this weekend working on this project. Steve finds my sense of urgency hilarious since the boys won’t be wearing them until October, but I would like to get these sweaters finished just the same.

I’m also working on a nursing shawl for myself – something to wear on my shoulders to stay warm while I nurse, especially in the middle of the night. It, too, was started before we learned we were having a girl. The final dimensions of this shawl will be 72″ x 22″. There are 640 rows, and I have completed a little over 20%. At a rate of 32 rows per week, I should finish around 36 weeks, in time to block it and have it ready to go when baby arrives.

When I take this project with me to Wednesday night knitting, I complete 20 rows or so in 2 1/2 hours. When I work on it at home, with interruptions, I can complete 6 rows in 45 minutes; without interruptions, it takes me just shy of 30 minutes. That means that when all is said and done, it will take me somewhere between 54 and 80 hours to complete this project. Accordingly, in order to complete what remains, I need to spend 2.5 to 4 hours on it per week, outside of all of the baby knitting (and quilting) that I have planned.

So, in reality, I haven’t been doing much baby knitting. In fact, I’m realizing more and more how prepared I was for another boy. I had all sorts of knitting lined up so I wouldn’t have time to be disappointed that I wasn’t knitting for a little girl. Yes, indeed.

Last Monday, I did actually start one of the little girl projects I have. It’s a long-sleeved wrap made out of a cotton-linen blend. It’s size 12 months, so she might be wearing this next spring. Shall we say, not urgent. It’s a fun knit, though the cotton-linen blend gets hard on my hands after a while (there’s no “give” in it as with wool yarn).

I will say that the planning stage is pretty much over. I haven’t been adding much to my queue in the past few days. And I’m looking forward to making all of the little projects, so they are by no means hanging over my head. I’m also making a list of projects I love but simply won’t have time to do. Like this. I’m trying not to be heartbroken, but there are only so many hours in a day.

I did make some decisions on baby quilts and room design this weekend, so I’m working on that as well.

Dare I say, with all these projects, the next 19 or so weeks are going to be passing by very quickly?

Every December, the Yarn Harlot has this long list of things she needs to knit for gifts. It’s a list that would make any knitter tremble, yet every year she is sure that she can get everything done. She has this friend who makes up a knitting schedule for her, after she provides her friend with the estimated time to knit each project and other holiday obligations which will be cutting into her knitting time. It’s the race to the finish every year. She inevitably gets behind, but she always finishes, even if she has to extend Christmas a few days by knitting according to when she is going to see people rather than when Christmas Day actually occurs.

Before we found out we were having a girl, I simply assumed we’d be having another boy. A boy would be straightforward – use the stuff we’ve got plus something new here and there. I really wanted a girl, but I didn’t want to make all these plans only to have them make the disappointment even more bitter. Now that we know a little girl is on the way, I’ve been in a frenzy making plans for all the things I want to make for my little girl.

I must confess, my list of things to knit was getting longer…and longer…and longer. I bought some pretty – very pretty! – yarn. And I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by it all. I needed a friend like the Yarn Harlot has. Or maybe not. There is more to life than knitting and sewing for a little girl. There are only 24 hours in a day, and she can only wear one outfit at a time.

On Ravelry, you can mark a pattern as a favorite or put in in your queue. If I love something, I mark it as a favorite. If I actually intend to make it, I add it to my queue. Today I sorted through my queue and put things in order according to the size I intend to make. I deleted some things, added a few others. But I think I now have a healthy list of things to make in each size, or for each season, that will be practical, fill a need in her little wardrobe, and give me the opportunity to make some of the things I just love, all while continuing to have a life. I still have seventeen things in my queue, but some of them won’t be worn until next fall (2010), so time is on my side.

The little sweater above is one of the girly things I made before the ultrasound. Occasionally I need a baby gift, so rather than knitting for a deadline, I just knit things I like when I see them and have the opportunity, placing them in my gift stash. That little sweater was one of those things, but now I will get to use it on my little girl. It’s so cute – the picture does not do it justice. I have it displayed on my dresser so I can enjoy looking at it for a while before I put it away with all of the other things I have stashed for my little girl to wear. But I will have fresh knits to show you soon, knit specifically for my little girl.

I’m deep into preparations for new baby. I kind of held off doing much of anything until we had the ultrasound and found out (hopefully) if we were having a boy or a girl. If we were having a boy, I had a couple things that I thought I might knit, but most of my preparations would have revolved around getting everything back out and ready to go. But since we’re having a girl, those simple plans have been turned upside down.

The other day I went through all of our baby clothes (as you see above), sorting out what was gender netural, what I might sell, and what would be donated. Now instead of having two totes and two drawers of clothes-in-waiting, I only have one of each. The single drawer (granted, a big drawer) contains Ben’s clothes waiting for Joey. The tote will contain items of the opposite season waiting to be sold.

We have not been so lucky as to have hand-me-downs for Ben to wear. Thus I have become quite resourceful at finding clothes that are nice but not expensive. Most of his clothes every season I buy used, a dollar or two a piece for shirts, up to five dollars a pair for jeans. I buy (or we are given as gifts) a couple new outfits which the boys wear only when we go to town. [Yes, at our house, we get dressed up to go to town.] Otherwise, they just wear second-hand clothes around the house, which is nice because I don’t have to worry so much about their getting stained or torn, which inevitably happens.

Unfortunately, since we haven’t received hand-me-downs, we don’t pass them on either. When we are finished with clothes, if they are fit to be resold, I sell them and use the funds to buy “new” second-hand clothes. If they are not fit to be resold, no one I know would want them so I just donate them.

With Ben, we didn’t know if we were having a boy or girl so I have a sufficient supply of 0-3 month sized clothes for the new babe. Since she is expected in September, by the time she is ready for the next size (which was about 6 weeks with Ben and 8 with Joey), it will be time for cool season clothes, so there is no buying anything for her now. I have a good stash of cool-season clothes to turn in when the time comes, and then I will shop for both Ben and baby.

As for knitting for baby girl, can I just say I have a dozen projects in my queue for which I already have yarn and pattern, and many others which I would love to add but will probably not have time for. Again, knitting stuff sized up to 6 months is a pretty safe bet, but judging at the different pace at which my boys grew (Ben ahead of schedule and Joey behind), some of those projects may have to wait until I know which size to knit. Regardless, my needles will be flying for the next few months.

And then there is the bedroom. Our house only has two bedrooms upstairs, and with small children, I’m not going to sleep at the opposite end of the house. Thus the three of them will be sharing a room. The bedrooms are generously sized, and the bunk beds, the crib, and two dressers fit comfortably with room to spare. Had we found out we were expecting a boy, this would have been easy. Joey would have moved to the bottom bunk, Ben to the top, and new baby would have occupied the crib as it is.

But I will only be having one girl, and she will not be wearing boys clothes or sleeping on blue crib sheets. Granted, the decoration scheme I came up with originally was blue and yellow with plaid and subtle flowers (shown above in a picture I took of the crib after we moved the mattress over to the toddler bed for Ben before Joey was born). It’s worked well for the boys, but the fabric the former owners put up as wallpaper on the wall has half been torn down by my boys (it was hung with starch), so it’s time to move on to a new decor anyway.

I went shopping for fabric, thinking that I could find something floral to go with the navy, red, green and yellow that the quilts for the boys will be. But after an afternoon of shopping, I concluded that if the colors are primary (as in the quilts I made, shown above in progress), they are boy colors. If the colors are pastel, they are girl colors. So no luck on finding something girly that would go with what I already have for the boys.

At this point, my theory is that I will paint the walls a nice beige (keeping the white woodwork trim around the middle) and that will look nice with the boys quilts on one side of the room as well as whatever I pick for the girl side of the room.

Quite frankly, I prefer primary colors to pastels. I did find one bolt of floral fabric that I thought would have worked well for the crib skirt. But I want to make her a quilt as well, and I had no idea what I would come up with that would not look completely un-coordinated with the crib skirt. Granted, Joey’s quilt (shown on the chair above) doesn’t exactly coordinate with the crib skirt, but at least the blue and yellow is quite visible in it, so it works. I want new baby’s quilt to have at least one side of the soft plush fabrics that Joey’s quilt is made with. But those fabrics seem to be dominated with pastels – I don’t remember seeing any in primary colors.

So I am kind of banging my head against the wall at the moment. Steve is anxious to get the painting done. I want to finish the sweaters I started for the boys before I start into baby knitting. Today I did look at paint swatches and found what I thought would be the perfect color to complement the boys’ quilts as well as potential girly colors. But then I got worried about how my perfect color looks against our golden/orange natural wood floors. When I put the paint swatch on the floor, it doesn’t look pretty. (The floors look dark in all of the pictures in this post, but they are essentially the same color as the closet door next to the crib.) So do I ignore the floor or pick another color? That is the question.

And that, my friends, is where you find me here on a Sunday evening past my usual bedtime. Tomorrow is another day. One never knows what solutions might magically appear…

Wednesday morning, the day of our ultrasound, Steve asked Ben if he thought he would have a little brother or little sister. Ben answered, Little brother, as his answer is most of the time (but not always).

Then Steve asked Joey if he was going to have a little brother or a little sister. Joey’s answer? “No!”

So Steve asked again. “Joey, do you think the baby in Mommy’s tummy is a little brother or a little sister?”

Joey walked over to me, lifted up my shirt, examined my belly, and concluded, “No! Mommy!”

Our dentist (who has three boys) has told us more than once that once you have two of one sex, the odds of the next one being the other sex are less than 50/50. And it may be true.

Steve and I had both resigned ourselves to the fate of having three boys. We both wanted a girl, but we didn’t want to be disappointed, and the odds seemed to be stacked against us. Still, there was a chance….

The ultrasound tech started at baby’s head and told us she does everything in order (for which I don’t blame her with the list of things she has to document). The looked at the brain, then examined the spine and made sure everything was there. When she got down to the tailbone, I wondered if maybe she’d snatch the opportunity to take a peek and see if baby was a boy or girl.

I had been looking at ultrasound pictures of boys and girls online that morning, but I was by no means and expert. Baby’s head was down and the legs were pulled up, so we had a very good view. I saw the three lines and wondered if it was a girl, but I thought the tech would move the ultrasound down a little and the little boy parts would come into view.

But the tech said, “It looks like we have a girl.” She moved the ultrasound around a little, and it was definitely a girl. I don’t think you could be more sure on an ultrasound.

And I must confess, I’m in shock. I so cannot wrap my mind around this. Steve and I are having a little girl. Oh my!