Malabrigo Superbulky (also apparently known as Malabrigo Gruesa) in “Glazed Carrots.” I acquired this from Ashley a long time ago, and still have no idea what to do with it! I had to have it since it was this awesome color and half-price. Super bulky knits don’t look so flattering on me, so I am thinking possibly felted cat bed? Hmm.

Right now I’m working on June’s sparkly holiday bolero. I’ve done all the main knitting, it just needs to be seamed & the ribbing picked up for the edging, so that will be finished this weekend. I wanted to thank everyone who helped me out with my colorwork issues earlier in the week! It has been worked out that by knitting flat, I was accidentally doing intarsia rather than fair isle. I didn’t know this, so I didn’t know that in intarsia you need to twist the yarns together to keep those holes from forming. I also didn’t realize that I should have carried both colors all the way across, rather than just the burgundy. A few people suggested I try knitting the Fake Isle hat as a good first intro into colorwork. I wasn’t wanting to knit anything prior to buckling down on the stocking since I only have 2 months to get it done, but I think I will give it a try since the hat will probably go pretty quickly. If worse comes to worse, I will just knit a striped stocking and add some duplicate stitch or embroidery. I am sure June will love it no matter what, but I’d really like to conquer colorwork if I can.

In closing, cat:

I am pretty upset right now so I apologize in advance for the probable rambly and disjointed post that is to follow.

I never thought I would have to do this. We need to find a new home for Ripple.

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Well, it’s 6 days until my due date, so unless I go late, this may be my last big post until after the baby comes, though I may do a quick update when I go into labor, before I leave for the hospital since that will be quicker than emailing everyone who wanted to be informed…

In knitting news, I finished this little baby sweater!

Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman
Yarn: approx 350 yards of handpainted merino sock yarn from Blue Swallow Handmade, color: “Early Evening”
Needles: KnitPicks Options circs, size 4
This was a relatively quick knit for me, I started Friday night and finished last night, knitting for 2-3 hours a day. I’d never used an Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern before, so I didn’t really know that her patterns are more like general guidelines rather than specific word for word instructions…this presented a problem for me because I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. Huge thanks to Marlena for helping me decipher it with a handy spreadsheet! After the initial rough start, I got into a rhythm and it became an easy knit. The patterns calls for a gauge of 6 st/inch, and I got 6.25 st/inch, so I knew it was going to be a little smaller, but it looks super small to me… I don’t really have any concept of baby sizes though, so hopefully it will fit a newborn. I’m going to try to block some additional size in to it tonight. Do you guys think it’s gender neutral enough? It’s mostly orange, but it has some pink in it, but also some blue, so I was hoping they balanced each other out…

I also want to send a big thank you to Alison for sending me the cutest ever mobile for the baby’s room! She sent me one of the famous Flensted Rollephants! And look, in the exact perfect colors! Thank you so much Alison, I love it! (sorry for the crap pic, I swear, the yellow walls make it IMPOSSIBLE to get good pictures in that room…)

Cassidy was enjoying watching it last night from what she assumes to be her new bed…

Gah, she’s so cute but I don’t want her fur all over the baby’s brand new things so I guess I need to leave the door to the nursery closed…I don’t know how that’s going to work when the baby gets here though.

Finally, I thought it would be fun to have a little contest! Leave me a comment letting me know when you think the baby is going to be born, what the sex will be, and how much it will weigh. The person who comes the closest in all categories will win an as yet to be determined prize (probably something yarny if you’re a knitter, something else awesome if you’re not…) In the case of a tie, I’ll use a random number generator to pick the winner. Here are some facts if you want to use them in determining your guess:

• This is my first child
• I know with absolute certainty the date the baby was conceived, which puts my due date at 1/24. However, my midwives determined the due date based on a rough guess of when my last period was, which puts me at 1/29. I obviously consider my date more accurate
• My last ultrasound, 4 weeks ago, estimated the baby’s weight at almost 7 lbs
• My husband and I were both 10 lb babies
• I’ve carried very high this whole pregnancy and the baby’s heart rate has always been above 145 bpm (both supposed signs of a girl), however, my belly has developed a fine layer of peach fuzz (supposed sign of a boy since a boy would release testosterone into my system, resulting in hair growth).
• I’ve only had 1 baby dream and in that dream at various points the baby was a girl, a lobster, a kitten, and a boy, in that order.

We put up our tree last weekend and I thought I’d show you my favorite ornaments.

This ornament I swiped from my mom’s house when I moved out. She hand-sewed a bunch of these horse ornaments from a couple of my dad’s old silk neckties when I was a baby…they’ve all fallen apart over the years except for this one…I love it’s garishness.

My other favorite ornament is this old santa. It was my dad’s when he was kid. We have 2 or 3 of these, and it’s funny because when I moved in with Matt he had an identical one that was his mom’s when she was a kid!

And finally, this is our tree topper. When I was a little girl, my great-grandma would give me a china doll to add to my collection every year. None of them survived unbroken (courtesy of my younger brother!) except this one. She died when I was 4 or 5 and ever since then my mom has been using this as a tree topper in her memory. She gave it back to me after I got married so now I get to use it every year. She’s looking a little worse for wear, with her yellowed dress and messy hair (I’m sure the yearly dose of tree-sap doesn’t help), but I love her anyway.

I’d love to hear or see what your favorite ornaments are!

In other news, Christmas knitting is almost done. I finished knitting my dad’s hat, I just need to sew in the fleece lining. I’m about halfway done with Matt’s scarf and I started Branching Out for my mom last weekend and it’s going really well! I was worried it would be hard, but it’s surprisingly simple! I just like….follow the directions, and it somehow works! Imagine! I also have the blocks sewn for my Mother-in-law’s quilt, so hopefully I can get the quilt top assembled tonight and then maybe if I am really ambitious, basted and quilted this weekend…look for pics of all that stuff next week.

In baby news, I had a midwife appointment on Wednesday. As she was feeling my belly to check out the baby she mentioned that the baby seems kind of big for 34 weeks, but that it was hard for her to tell because it was all jammed up under my ribs…she was wondering how I was breathing these days (not easily). I asked if she could tell if the baby was head down yet, and she said she can’t tell because of it’s position, but that she thought she might feel the head under my ribs, which would mean the baby is breech, which would be bad because my hospital will not deliver breech babies (I’d have to have a scheduled c-section which is just about my worst fear in life)! So she’s sending me for another ultrasound on Wednesday to check the baby’s size and position. It’s still pretty early, so even if the baby is breech, it could still flip before I go into labor and there are some techniques I can try to get it to flip on my own, but of course I am worried about it anyway! I guess we’ll see on Wednesday.

And if you’ve made it this far, here are some cat pictures for your enjoyment. Cassidy has decided that the baby’s changing table is her new bed and pretty much only leaves that spot to eat and use the litter box. I don’t really want to encourage her to sleep on the baby’s things, but I don’t have the heart to kick her off there since she loves it oh so much…I’m going to buy her and Ripple a new bed for Christmas and place it next to a heating vent, so maybe that will coak her out of there.

And finally, here is Ripple after dinner last night. You can see what a mess he makes with the kibbles now that he has no teeth! I’m dustbusting that spot several times a day. But he seems to be feeling much better, despite the sad little shaved area on his left paw…hurry up and grow fur patch!

1. We took Ripple in for his tooth surgery on Friday. The poor guy had to have all his teeth removed. When we picked him up Friday night he was still dopey from the anesthesia so he didn’t seem to be in much pain. He was acting weirdly drunk and hyper. And starving! He scarfed down 2 cans of wet food and even tried to eat some dry food, but that didn’t work out so well…he kept dropping it. It was so sad to watch! But by Saturday the meds had worn off and he was pretty mopey and hurty-mouthed and not much interested in food. I had some pain gel to squirt into his mouth a couple times a day and that seemed to help. By yesterday though he seemed almost back to normal and only took about 2 bites of the wet food before going over to the dry food which he seems to be able to gum down now (neither of my cats like wet food, is that weird? Ripple liked it the first few times I gave it to him, but then he was all set with it…Cassidy has always hated it). Anyway, the vet said even though his mouth is still sore, he probably feels better now than he did before the surgery since his teeth were so bad. So I am glad he’ll be feeling a lot better soon. However…the estimate they gave us prior to surgery was $580-$750 depending on how hard it was to remove the teeth. Of course I was hoping it was going to be on the lower end of the spectrum but when we went to check out it was $950!!! Oh man, my husband was not happy! Turns out when they wrote the original estimate they “forgot” to include IV fluids ($130) and all the blood glucose checks he’d need since he’s diabetic, and the take home pain meds…so that should be paid off sometime in JULY. But of course, he’s worth it….

 2. I am not a big party person so I told my mom that I didn’t want any sort of baby shower. I told her that if people wanted to get stuff, just to get it for Christmas instead. She was fine with that, but my in-laws were not and they decided to throw me a surprise baby shower yesterday! It went fine and I got a lot of great stuff. I wanted to cloth-diaper, but it’s a little pricey so I was weighing my options but my mother-in-law bought us 3 months of diaper service! Woo hoo! So we can cloth diaper for free for a few months and see if we like it and then keep going with it on our own if we decide we do. It’s about $18/week which isn’t really too bad considering I won’t have to do any of the washing myself and disposables really aren’t that much cheaper, but we got a lot of disposables at the shower too, so we’ll have some on hand if we decide we don’t like cloth.

We have pretty much everything we registered for now, except the bedding which my mom is buying me next week and then we’ll be done! I started decorating the nursery on Saturday night so I thought I’d share a few pictures. It still looks incomplete because of the lack of bedding and I don’t really have any pictures up on the walls yet, but hopefully I can finish up in the next couple of weeks and I’ll share more pics then. Excuse the crappy quality, I took the pics at night and there’s not a lot of light in that room right now…

Here’s the view from the living room. The farm animals you see are Blik decals. Easier than painting and they look really nice in person…you’d never know they weren’t painted on. I want to get some of the more grown-up style graphics to put in our bedroom at some point.

The valance on the window matches the bedding set we picked out, I can’t wait to get it! Some of the stuff you see in here is temporary. Like the bassinet will go in our bedroom but I didn’t want to put it in there yet. When that’s gone, I’ll probably put a little bookcase or end table there. Also that’s just an old rocking chair we had hanging around and it’s not super comfy so I’m hoping to get a nicer one. Giant red birdy pillow courtesy of Lily’s Rooster!

The jog stroller / pack & play / high chair boxes will be gone at some point and I’ll put a hamper in that corner next to the dresser. And we’ll probably put a lamp/humidifier/baby monitor on that shelf since the only outlet in the room is weirdly positioned right in the middle of the wall…

And finally, the view from the rocking chair, looking into the living room…definitely need some pictures above the changing table, but I think the vodka bottle doorstop is a nice touch.

Baby stuff:
We went to a Halloween party Saturday night and I dressed as a pregnant kitty, as seen below (I’ll be 28 weeks on Wednesday).

I feel so huge (and I swear to god, I don’t know what’s up with this pic, but my face is seriously not that bloated in real life…I promise you!) I am not sleeping well these days and I am not very good without sleep, so that has been rough. The horrible heartburn I suffer from ALL DAY EVERY DAY has been unpleasant as well. I’m not ready to have a baby right now, but I am SO ready not to be pregnant anymore. 3 more months. Sigh. We’re getting the crib and dresser next weekend, so I’ll be able to set up the nursery really soon which should be fun!

Work Stuff: Work has been pretty hectic and probably will continue to be until I go out on maternity leave (86 days left unless I go into labor first!) We’re set to release the new version of the software 2 weeks before my due date, and I am the only QA person so I have to make sure it’s as close to perfect before it goes out. And this release contains a ton of srsly important and complicated government mandated changes, that I don’t even fully understand yet, so everyone is really stressed about it.

Knitting Stuff: On the needles right now is a Kidsilk Haze shawl that I will hopefully be able to finish by the end of this coming weekend, 1. So I don’t kill myself from the utter hatred I feel for this yarn and 2. so I can move onto my Christmas gifts. I have scaled down my knitted gifts list dramatically. I wanted to knit for everyone, but that’s just not gonna happen this year. So once I am done with the shawl, I’m going to work on the Rustic Scarf for Matt (which I’m only going to be able to work on when he’s not around, like on my lunch breaks and stuff) and then Branching Out for my mom and a simple watchcap type hat for my dad. I’m also making a quilt for my Mother-in-law and that will probably be it for the handmade gifts this year, barring a big energy burst, which seems unlikely at this point. Hopefully I’ll have a couple of weeks after Christmas before the baby comes to get at least a sweater and hat knitted for it.

Cat stuff: Poor Ripple! I noticed that he was having a hard time eating and closing his mouth the last week or two, and his little tongue was always hanging out and he has started drooling a lot…so I took him to the vet and she said all his teeth need to be pulled out! They did some bloodwork to make sure he was healthy enough to have surgery and that came back clear, so she’s sending me an estimate in the mail this week (will be around $500-$600, not including the $150 for the bloodwork…ugh) and I have to schedule the surgery ASAP. I’ve switched him over to wet food so he can eat a little easier (they normally only eat dry food) and he seems to be doing well with that. It’s important that he’s eating normally because he’s also diabetic and if he’s not eating, I can’t give him his insulin and his blood sugar gets all messed up. Poor guy. He’s only 7, so it’s not like he’s an old man yet. She says once his teeth are out he’ll feel a lot better and should be healthy for many years to come. I’m really nervous about it and I hate seeing him in pain, so I hope everything goes OK!

I do! My parents just got a new kitten! She’s 9 weeks old and her name is Amy Ray. She is literally the most sickeningly cute thing I have ever seen. I went over there last night, and took about 100 pictures of her, and I tried to narrow it down to the 20 cutest to post (this was way hard!) Now I want a new kitten too!

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This month’s Tie one on theme is “Mini-me.” The challenge was to make an apron for yourself, then make a mini version of it for your child/doll/pet, etc. Well, there was no way I could pass up the opportunity to humiliate my cats by making them wear an apron….

Here is my version of the apron, it’s made from vintage cloth napkins: