Look! Cutest baby ever!

ETA: Yes, I forgot to actually upload the pictures last night. Hey, the other day I burned water, so in the grand scheme of things, I whould probably be forgetting this instead of that.



Now that I have distracted you from the number of days it has been between posts (hey, at least now I can say "days" instead of "weeks"), let's move on.

An Apology
I owe my SP10 spoilee a huge, huge apology, and I think it's appropriate that it be public. I really fell down on the job this time by not emailing as often as I should have and not sending her package out until very late. I'm not sure what happened -- I had such a great time finding everything to put in her package and even had it packed by the first week in July. And then it just sat there. Mara, I'm really, really sorry, and I do hope you enjoy your package. You should be receiving it later this week (it went out UPS on Friday).

Baby stuff (old and new)
Becky has a fun new game: she picked up on me saying "Excuse you?!?!?" when she swatted at me one morning, so now she likes to trade "Scoose oo?"s with me until she eventually dissolves into a fit of giggles. Since I also dissolve into a fit of giggles, this works out okay for us. She also tried 3 new foods this morning, two of which were chewables, and didn't throw a tantrum at me when we went in to have breakfast. This is something of a major breakthrough -- I hope it lasts. She a great kid and tons of fun most of the time, but lately mealtimes have been a trial.

I finally remembered to see if they have Pullups in her size so we can start the potty training -- she loves to go into the bathroom and sit on her potty, so I think she's ready to at least try it. Hit a bit of a snag, though. See, when Becky was a teeny tiny baby, she used to compeltely freak out when she had a wet diaper. As she's gotten older, she's stopped doing that. Apparently the absorbency's just better on the mid-size diapers, because when she had a wet diaper in the Pullups (which are designed to let kids feel the wetness), it was the end of the world. Complete breakdown. She was so traumatized that I didn't even want to take her into the bathroom because I don't want her to associate the bathroom with being that upset. I mean, really, it's like someone is sticking her with pins (this is even more odd when you take into account that she's never had a real diaper rash in her entire life, so it's not like she's got super sensitive skin on her tushie). So no more Pullups for now. I'm going to get the nighttime ones because they're supposed to be more absorbent, so hopefully those will work.

No real news about New Baby, but we'll find out Wednesday which flavor we're getting this time and I'll be sure to let you know.

Knittin' Stuff
I got my invite! I got my invite! To Ravelry, of course. Now I just have to become organized (they want to know about my stach and my books! That's going to take me forever!), start taking pictures of my knitting (and posting them on Flickr), decide on an avatar, join some groups, etc., etc.

So maybe having this FO is a good thing!




This is Leaf, from Spring Knitty. I enjoyed knitting this, but I'm not entirely pleased with the final product, and in case I blame the designer since I actually knit it according to the directions (except that I changed the bottom edges to seed stitch and no hemming, and only applied the i-cord to the sides and not across the back) and did get gauge. See, if you look at the pictures that accompany the pattern, you'll see that the sleeve is very fitted to the arm. Not usually my style, but in this case very attractive. The sleeves on my sweater? Hang like I've just put my arms into two grocery sacks. It's such a difference that I was sure I'd done something wrong. So I went back to the pattern and did a little math. For the smallest size (32" bust), you pick up 52 stitches for the sleeves (the sleeves don't have any increases or decreases). For the largest (45" bust), it's 82 stitches. At 4.5 st/in, that's a difference of just over 6 and a half inches! Seriously, that's some bad upsizing. I know that upsizing is difficult (it's the main reason I've not yet submitted a sweater design for publication -- though I suppose in my case it would be "down-sizing" since I design for myself first), but it never hurts to use a little common sense. Because the boobie fairy was kind to me does not mean that I have arms the size of Hulk Hogan's. I could fix it (if you're interested, what I would do is stop the armhole increases at around 60 and then do the other 22 increases [per side] at the edges instead. That would keep the diagonal going there while keeping the sleeve normal sized.), but I'm really just using it to throw on when I'm chilly and I have way too many other things to do.

I'm making progress on my stepmom's socks (there was a set back this morning, but it was only a few rows so I'm just going to pretend like it didn't happen), and I got a few rows done on my Ring cycle (aka Dream Twist) socks. Not as much as I'd hoped, but I'll blog about the opera (which I'm really enjoying) tomorrow, as this post is getting a bit long even for me.

posted by Laura Y. @ 3:06 PM