Monday 15 October 2007

Remembering

It's too late to ask anyone who might be visiting this blog to join in the Wave of Light this year, but I still wanted to post something today.

October 15th is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day (in America) or National Baby Loss Awareness Day (in the UK). The idea of the wave of light is that people light a candle at 7pm in their time zone on the day and let it burn for an hour in order to create a wave of light across the world.

There was going to be more to this post, hopefully there will be later when I can get back to the computer to write more. However, tonight my very much alive and kicking and screaming daughter needs me as sleeping is not going so well for her tonight. This (to the right) is a picture of my first little girl.

Friday 5 October 2007

Thrift Thursday

I haven't posted any of my thrifting finds for ages. I don't have photos of most of them. I've been mostly getting old bedsheets, some plain to use to try out patterns I'm not sure about and some more interesting ones to sew with too. Also scraps of fabric, books and even a few items of clothing for me and the rest of my household. Here's a picture of some thrift-store finds from mid-July that I didn't manage to actually blog about back then:
Some clothes for my daughter, and some fabric. The books were my favourite part -- I'm sure there's lots of useful info to be found in "How to Make Clothes Fit and Flatter", and "Fun with Scraps" looks as though it could really live up to its name. Hopefully I'll manage to spend some more time looking through them before too much longer.

And now to this week's finds. I went into the thrift store with my mum along which meant she could watch my daughter if I wanted to try on clothes. Consequently I came out with two pairs of trousers, very exciting! Also I've been wanting some shoes for a while: I need some to fill that period between sandal and snow boot weather; something to cover my feet and preferably that I can slip off and on easily for getting down on the floor with my daughter to play (and 'cause I prefer to go unshod whenever I can). I've been looking at Earth shoes online, and in the local shoe store but can't really afford to buy any just at the moment. However, I found these two pairs for just over ten dollars at the thrift store this week. Yay! They both seem barely worn, and seem to fit me nicely. Definitely belong on my 10Things list as the brown pair in particular are making me very happy (and unexpectedly so as I don't like not having a back to my shoes usually, and haven't worn much of any heel in ages).

Wednesday 3 October 2007

in the dark

This is why I should not attempt anything patterned when knitting in the dark.
I was knitting the first cuff for the longies I'm making my daughter. Obviously they are supposed to be moss stitch and while knitting in the car without bothering to get my little light out I managed to get off and start ribbing. At least it was only a few rows, it's fixed now and I'm on to the second leg. My mum's going to finish her pair first though I think. Not that she has to finish as soon as we thought -- my parents just changed their tickets to stay another week!

Monday 1 October 2007

Visiting and Ravelry

My parents are visiting. They've been here for three weeks already and go home on Thursday. As usual I anticipated all I was going to get done with my mum around to help out and as usual I've done hardly any of it. There's the time spent visiting, the time wasted procrastinating when I finally do get me time that I don't use for housework, and the extra stuff that has to be done because we have people staying with us. Also my parents always time their trips to do singing stuff which means the weekends tend to be full of events rather than relaxing, not to mention the potluck cooking that is usually involved too. This trip we did actually have one weekend mostly free which was nice, we made it to the Saturday farmers market for the first time in ages. We (my husband and I) were going to go on a date to see a movie by ourselves for the first time since my daughter was born, but then there was nothing on that we were excited to see. Disappointing.

Anyway, I'd been thinking I'd get back to this blog in September and clearly didn't. I haven't even managed to keep up with the year of color posts (though I have been taking pictures and putting them up in my flickr account).

I managed to get into my sewing room a couple of times in the last few weeks which felt good. I made myself a new tank top based on drawing around an old tank top. It came out pretty well I think. I know the weather's getting colder here new, but as a nursing mother that means I need layers so that I can have some pulled down over my midriff and some pulled up to allow access when nursing so I don't get chilly! I'm also working on a pair of trousers for my daughter -- I'm always sad about the lack of warm trousers on offer for little ones and last year I made some reversible elasticated waist trousers for my daughter that worked great. They actually still fit, sort of -- they're too short but they still go over the bulky cloth diapers unlike a lot of store bought pants.

Not sure whether I'll manage to blog more when my parents leave. This is especially true because today I got my invite to Ravelry so I may get sucked in there adding stash and projects and the like. I'm going to try and go slow and steady with adding my stuff because we have managed to make the house a bit more presentable while my parents have been here, and have found a fairly good rhythm for the day which we should maintain. (I'm commonplaceiris at Ravelry)

Here's one of my current knitting projects which I did just add, a new pair of Aubrey Doodlepants for my daughter since she's growing out of her old ones (they're too short but just about squeeze over the diapers still) and we need some warm things for the cold weather that's coming.

My mum and I each cast on a pair a few weeks back ready for some long car trips and look how far we've come (she's about the same amount through as me). The gusset is a bit wider than I meant, but then the space between the leg holes on the short soakers is often wider than that so hopefully it'll be a good thing. I have almost enough yarn in one ball to get to the end of the first leg so I'm not sure what I'll knit with the rest of the yarn. Maybe a short soaker, or perhaps I could make a hat and mittens and lanolize them for my daughter to wear when playing in the snow.