My bump

It's getting bigger all the time! Actually, it looks sort of lumpy here.


Oh, and it's not an it--it's a girl!!!

Photo taken December 13th.

Holidays on Ice

It's been 3 weeks since I've updated the blog, but I've got some good excuses. A flurry of excuses, in fact.

First, of course, that perennial excuse: "It was the holidays." This year I made all my own gifts, which included a knitted scarf for my year-old niece, three "sleeping bags" for my 3 to 4 year-old nieces' dolls, a doll "diaper" bag for my toddler niece, a large batch of shortbread cookies for everyone in my department at work, candied nuts for the women I live with every day in cube-land, and this, which isn't even done yet, and yes, it's after Christmas:

This damn thing is my first foray into lace knitting, and while technically the stitches are easy enough to create, what's hard is following the pattern. At first, I was following the written instructions, which go something like "k3, ssk, yo, ssk, k1, [k2tog, yo] 2 times," etc. Once I got the gist of it, I started using the charted pattern instead, which looks something like notes on a musical staff, with five different lace rows, each followed by a simple purl row. As I said, the stitches themselves aren't hard, but I'm having a hell of a time not losing my place as I go along. Whether this is due to mild ADD or just a matter of being an inexperienced knitter, I don't know. When it's going well, I feel like a virtuoso, knitting in an imagined rhythm that corresponds to the charted "notes" on the page. But then I get to the end of a row and discover that I'm one stitch short, so I end up going back and counting and counting again, only to end up ripping out 5, 6, 7 rows at a time just to get back to a neutral place where I can start over.

So each night, for every 20 rows I knit, I probably rip out 7 of them. It's kind of like paying down my credit cards: for every payment I make, the finance charges end up eating a good portion of whatever I just paid, and the progress I make in paying down my debt seems to crawl along at a snail's pace, just like this scarf. But unlike paying down my credit card, the yarn I'm working with is a tactile dream: it's 50/50 silk/wool, hefty yet smooth and soft, with a beautiful, subtle sheen. The scarf is for my mom. I showed her the work-in-progress, and she loves it. Phew.

I guess I don't have any other excuses. But here are some pics of the general white-out conditions we've been experiencing up here in Maine.

Thumbs losing her footing during the season's first snow:
After that, the sun came out, and we had some gorgeous days with the sun glinting off fresh, smooth snow. The calm before the storm:
The storm:
Nick running outside to move our car after the two cars in front of us cleared a path. We don't even have a shovel yet, so without using their tire tracks to guide us out, we would have gotten plowed under by the next snow plow, for sure:
And then, the calm once again after the storm, early one morning. It was as cold and early as I look.
I posted more cute animal photos under the weekly photos link.

Knitwit

Around this time last year, I was probably at some bar on the Lower East Side, drinking a cocktail while wearing some cleaner, smaller clothes than the outfit I have on now: a pilly gray maternity sweater, and corduroys with a wide elastic waistband to accommodate my growing belly. Now, a year later, no longer single or living in New York City, my nights revolve around knitting, sewing and cooking with my boyfriend. Life has changed drastically, and yet it feels totally natural to be living in this apartment with the ocean nearby, our three pets, and my comparatively mundane routine.

Tomorrow we find out if I’m carrying a boy or girl, and our lives will change all over again.

Here is a picture of a sleeping bag I made for one of my niece's dolls for Christmas this year. Nick hasn't found a full-time job yet, so we're on a seriously tight budget for the foreseeable future. As it turns out, I'm actually quite pleased with the gifts I've been able to make. And it's lovely to have the luxury of time to be able to do so. Without social obligations or the extra money to spend on going out for dinner or movies, I'm finding that I really enjoy this forced domesticity. I don't know if I could find as much satisfaction in it were I still living in New York, with the city buzzing outside my window, a constant reminder of what I was missing.

Animal Update

Soon enough, this blog will be filled with photos of the baby. But for now, it's the animals that keep us amused.

The animals seem to be coming to an uneasy truce. Thumbs and Wiley have been spotted sharing a couch cushion; Ting Tong reluctantly ceded her bed to Wiley. And Thumbs figured out a strategy for taking over the apartment: she paws on the deck door to be let out, and Wiley inevitably follows. Then she climbs over the rooftop and down again and peers in at us through the front bank of windows until we notice her and let her in. Then she can take over the living room for a while, without worrying about getting ambushed by Wiley. It's a bit treacherous on the sloped roof outside our front windows, so it's lucky she has those big paws and extra thumbs, for better traction. I'm afraid she'll still try to do it even when the roof is icy and frozen.

Speaking of, we're supposed to get our first big snowstorm tonight! I'll post photos of the first winter storm coming in off the ocean. But first, photos of the animalz.