MamaKnits

Maria is completed!

Here's three pictures of the "Maria" set I just finished. It'll be donated to the foundation that supports kids that have her disease so that they can auction it off...

Now I'm working on designing a maternity sweater for myself. Something light and open, to wear over a tank top or small t-shirt, since I'm always so hot!

YUP, YOU READ IT CORRECTLY!  I'M PREGNANT!  Due sometime in June, and almost completely convinced that I'm having a girl!  Why I think that, I don't know, but it's a strong feeling from both John and I.  Woohooooo!

Maria needs your prayers...

Little Maria is the 8-month old daughter of my bosses ex-husband.  I was hired by my boss to make Maria a sweater set, as she is a very very sick little girl.  Well, I found out yesterday that Maria has been sent home from the hospital with no hope of recovery from her disease.  Maria will surely go to a better place where she is not in any pain and can play like a baby should be able to, so I need everyone's prayers, good thoughts and positive energy for baby Maria's parents, her family and all the people who love his little girl so very much.  When she is gone, as she will be very soon, a light will go out on this earth and a new star will be born in our sky.  Sleep well, baby Maria.

Update from 10/13 - Maria died at home last night while surrounded by people who love her.

No really, I didn't forget about you.

I have so many awesome pics to post of WIP's and FO's you won't believe it!  A baby sweater, a sweater for a friend (okay to be honest, it started out as a sweater for myself but I knit it too short) and um...I can't remember.  But I'll post, really I will.

Bit by a snake!

I've totally been in a knitting funk.  You know how I get when I get into a knitting funk.  It makes me seriously moody, anxious...really it affects more of  my life than I'd like to admit. 

I've been really jonesing to do something with this 100% cotton stuff that I have, but couldn't find a pattern that really struck me, so here I go again - making up my own.  I took a cable stitch pattern and centered it on the front of what will be a sleeveless top.  I unfortunately didn't make it wide enough (the top front), so I'm going to have to add side panels, or make the back wider to compensate.  We'll see which works better when I reach that point. 

I'm having to do some math (ew) to figure out my decreases for the top of the front.  I want it to be raglan'd, but want to keep the width of the neck matching the center panel of the front, so I have to figure out how many to decrease and on which rows.  Gah, I hate math.

I really want to finish this before my dad and stepmom get here on Friday, but I sincerely doubt that's going to happen.  To try to facilitate this though, I'm knitting it double-stranded on size 10.5 needles.  Wow they seem big. 

Ok, here's some pics:

I took these at night in my living room, which is extremely dimly lit, so the color's definitely off. I'm naming her "Snakebite". Hopefully she'll live up to it...

Oh yeah. Look at this.

http://shapeofamother.blogspot.com/

Love it, love it, love it.

A Quandry...

I am, once again, stalled as far as not knowing what to start next.  I have this fiber, 100% cotton, green-appley color, pretty lightweight stuff, that I recycled from a cableknit sweater earlier this summer, and I am really jonesing to do something with it, but I don't know what.  Here's what my nights have been like lately:

Get home from work.  Collapse for 2.89 seconds on the sofa before getting up again to:

1. Feed Declan
2. Play with Declan
3. Change Declan
4. Make sure all of Declan's wants and needs are met to the absolute best of my ability or there will be big trouble...from Declan, of course.

Continue the above until 7 or 7:30 when said Declan goes to bed. 

Sink into sofa, remove knitting needle/lost earring/soggy cracker Declan left as a present from butt cheek.  Get hair out of face.  Open up either Vogue Stitchionary Volume 1:  Knit & Purl or Volume 2:  Cables. 

Wipe drool from chin.  Tuck errant curl behind ear.  Attempt to look "normal".

Cast on 30 stitches in preparation for gauge swatch. 

Stop to pet dog, resulting in wiping further drool, this time dogs, off of chin, leg and sofa.  Realize dog soaked comfy shorts with drool.  Change shorts; sink into sofa again.

Now this is where I run into problems:  Choose stitch to swatch.

I can't.

I love them all and don't know where to start!  I know, I should just pick one and DO IT.  But by the time I think I've picked one, I'm exhausted by the process and just decide I'll sleep on it and try again tomorrow.

Did you see Kay's new mitered pin?  It makes my eyes go wiggy.

Ruthie is finished! OOOooooo pretty!

Yay!  I finished "Ruthie", the sweater that I'd been working on for a co-worker who just had a baby!  I thought it was fitting to name the sweater after the babe I created it for.  Without further ado...here she is!

Could you just die?

Or could this just kill you?  Read the book, online.  I'm convinced that there's no mother in the entire universe that can make it through this without getting teary-eyed.  I, myself, can not without bawling.  And when I was pregnant?  Hysterics.  Utter hysterics.

Gawd, I want another baby.  So.  Bad.

OH GAH!

So I ordered Volumes One and Two of the Vogue Knitting Stitchionary books...Volume One is Knit and Purl, Volume Two is Cables.  StickaforkinmeI'mdone.  These books are so awesomely grandly amazingly wonderful I can't even concentrate for a single second on anything else.  I spent the entire evening yesterday neglecting my husband, child and dog because I could not put them down.  The pictures!  The stitches!  The patterns!  Charts and symbols and designs, oh my!  And here I am, at evil work, with Cables slyly tucked in my desk drawer, tempting me mercilessly.  Would I get strange looks if I attempted to enter the ladies restroom with Cables in tow?  Men do it all the time with newspapers, no?  Ooo, there's the storeroom closet...I could get at least a good 10 minutes in there without being discovered.  I bet if I quietly slipped under my desk and into the corner, no one would even notice.  Knit and Purl, Cables and I will RULE THE WORLD!!!!

Seriously though, you've got to get these books.  I have no interest whatsoever in color work, but you can bet I'm getting Volume Three - Color.  Oh yeah.  I am.

Buttons. Indecision. Crede.

I finally picked out the buttons for the cabled sweater...actually, John picked them out - go figure!  I have been too lazy haven't had a chance to put them on yet, but when I do I'll take pics fer sure.  I'm itching to cast on something, but I don't know what.  A lot of my recycled yarn still has to be washed, which is something of an undertaking that I don't feel like, er, undertaking.  I do have some fuzzy laceweight stuff that I could start a wrap with.  Or I could pick up Rogue again.  And speaking of Rogue, I am such an idiot.  I put it on waste yarn because I needed the needles for another project, but now can't remember what size needles I was using.  Hopefully when I really do decide to work on it again, it'll come to me.  Gah.

It's so darkly grey and dreary and rainy out today.  These are days that just make me want to stay curled up in my bed under my covers with my cat.  Wait, I don't have a cat.  And there's no way I'm curling up with this: 

That's my boy, Crede. He's HUUUUUUGE, around 160 pounds I think. One hundred sixty pounds of pussycat marshmallow dog. He's the Bestest Dog Ever.