Knitting as Blood Sport.
Amethysts are a quite attractive colour. Pines are not grey. Scarlet is bright and vivid red. Electricity has no colour, but the name usually describes colours of a startling and clear intensity.
Crystal also has no colour. And if it did, it wouldn’t look like cat vomit.
Sugar Plums don’t look like diseased apricots.
You might just be on the money with “Blue Haze”. But I don’t really know, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in one…
Scroll down past the reasonable use for an appalling craft for the knitting.
I’ve been designing (in my head) a follow up to the Myrtle Scarf – but not doing much knitting. Knitting has consisted of more booties, one pair from the gorgeous watermelon yarn that Bex dyed for me ages ago, and an orange pair now on the needles to “match” his purple corduroy pants that I made.
Here are a few pics I took of Myrtle before she went to her forever home, hopefully illustrating the beautiful sheen and stitch definition of the yarn, and the lovely drape of the finished scarf. Unfortunately the photography is nothing special – I was literally running out the door as soon as I took the blocking pins out.
And here is a picture of the sprog in his February Baby Sweater by Bex.
On a desperate mission to get a scarf finished by thursday, so any spare moment I have while the child is asleep has been spent knitting.
Lynne, our community health nurse is retiring this week. She has been an amazing support, and will be sorely missed. She was instrumental in getting us to see Dr McVeagh, and ultimately getting answers. I had always intended to knit her something special, but I never expected to have such a short deadline. I am on the last of three balls, but I am seriously worried about my chances of getting the knitting finished, and getting it blocked and dried by thursday morning. Project details here for those of you on ravelry.
Last thursday Inigo was 7.13kg – above the 3rd percentile for weight – finally! He’s hovering around the 50th percentile for length, but his head circumference is above the 97th percentile. He is on track to follow his father into the special hat shop for cranial gigantism.
On friday night he tried “solids” for the first time. There are funnier photos, but the kid will have friends that know how to use the internet one day, so I’d better keep them private for now.
There has been some knitting. Nothing complicated, nothing interesting, but I wanted to prove that I do still knit. A little.
Here is Oscar in his pram blankie and beanie set, knitted years ago when I was off work recovering from my collapsed disk. It is knitted in Bendigo Harmony which, sadly, looks like it has been discontinued. I love this stuff, a wool cotton blend with a little lycra, it is lovely and soft to knit with, sproingy, and great against the skin. It always had a pathetic colour range, but it’s been shrinking for the last couple of years, and now seems to be disappearing all together.
And here we have Ella, Inigo’s cousin wearing her new winter hat. It’s based on the Umbilical Cord Hat from Stitch ‘n Bitch, but made a little larger to fit for a little longer. The yarn is bamboo cotton from Spotlight – exactly one ball with about 30cm to spare!
And soon here is Inigo in his new bootees. Cecelia made three pairs of “Christine’s Baby Booties” for Inigo, which have been fantastic. They are the only footwear that reliably stay on his feet, but he is growing out of them, so the time came to make some in a larger size.
The yarn is Stella, 100% bamboo, and has a lovely sheen and drape. I’ve held it double and knit on 4mm needles to make a larger bootie using the same pattern (it calls for a “fingering weight” yarn).
Tresillian will be calling me tomorrow for an admission interview. Apparently they expect me to tell them what I expect to get out of the Tresillian experience. Give me strength.
Yesterday I went to the Inner West mothers group that Miriam goes to. Needed to get out of the house to preserve sanity and escape rising hysteria. Being around so many healthy, normal babies was really hard, and I nearly cracked when one mother said to me, “I’d be really worried if that was my baby”. Apparently it isn’t obvious to the casual observer that I am consumed with fear, bleeding terror from every pore, and only barely managing to breathe through each new day that brings no news.
But on a lighter note…
Yesterday the child exploded. There was such a tidal wave of poo that it gushed out of the nappy, down the trousers, and welled into the top of the new booties. So I gave up on the modern cloth nappies for now, his thighs are too thin to plug the leg holes in the nappies. So it’s cloth terry at home, and huggies newborn for outings. Unless I want to buy a whole lot of newborn sized modern cloth nappies, this will have to do. I do feel like a bit of a failure, but right now I have other battles to fight.
Well, the baby isn’t quite finished….
But more of that later.
…that it’s about time I stopped being so lame, and learn how to crochet properly. I like crochet, not so much for garments, but for accessories, and for edging knitted pieces, but my crochet skills are pretty poor.
And this morning, I got “Crochet Blocks in a Box” by Luise Roberts. I had entered a Yarn Magazine competition ages ago, and apparently I won!
Thanks Yarn – looking forward to the next issue, and continuing a beautiful friendship.
Most of us give to charity now and then, Mark and I make a donation every year at Christmas instead of buying gifts for his family. We try to make it different every year, and last year for the first time we chose a human instead of an animal charity – we chose to send money to the orphanage we visited in Vietnam.
Today I came across the story of Macho, a baby alpaca who was the last of his flock to survive after they were abandoned to starve. Macho has been rescued by Edgar’s Mission, and is looking for sponsors to contribute to his care.
Inigo in his hand knitted organic merino soaker for the first time – kit from Eco Yarns
I took the squirt to see our community health nurse on thursday morning, as I wanted to ask her if she thought his issues were normal and nothing to worry about, or if it was worth pursuing further doctoring. My confidence was rocked rather badly by the Tresillian paediatrician, so I wanted to be sure I was on the right track before going off half cocked. She thinks it’s worth pursuing – screaming in pain an hour after a feed isn’t normal apparently. So we’re getting back on that horse, and I’m not getting off until we get an answer.
Alex sports a new hairstyle after a bath
I then went in to visit Alex, Adam and Sarah, and Sarah gave the boy a manicure and pedicure. Little fingers and toes have very little nails, and I still can’t bring myself to cut them. I tried once, it took me an hour to convince myself that I could do it, and then 15 minutes to cut one nail. I have a phobia about finger and toenails (I once put a staple through my thumbnail, and had to have someone else change the dressing until it had completely healed), and I come out in a cold sweat at the thought of having to trim his nails. As it is, I have to keep his hands in socks when his nails get too long, until I can get him over to see his Aunty for a manicure.
The view of the city from Balls Head at twilight
I picked up Mark from work, and we took the boy to Balls Head Reserve for a picnic. Since it was the day before payday, we had about $11 between us, which bought some chips and BBQ sauce, and a bottle of very cheap plonk, which we drank out of the bottle.
We were almost molested by a wild possum, who only left us alone after we convinced him that all the food was gone, and he went off to pester someone with food. One of the other picnickers was startled by a wet possum nose pressing against her leg as she was absorbed in conversation.
A fuzzy view of my Valentines Day. A gorgeous view, a beautiful husband, and a superb baby.
Ted, Inigo & Bev – his first “portrait” with grandparents
And Ted is fine.
Mark’s dad had to have surgery for a blood clot, which he was told was very dangerous. We were all very worried, and news that he was OK was a huge relief for all of us, especially Mark. We’ve all heard the stories about scary in-laws, controlling, manipulative, and downright mean, so it’s taken me a few years to get my head around the fact that Mark’s parents are exactly as kind, thoughtful, generous and caring as they seem. It’s a little bit strange to me that people can be that nice and not have a hidden agenda, but they are. Better parents in law you could not hope for.
Oh, and I finished knitting the socks. Now I just have to graft the toe and weave in some ends, and it’s safe for dad to have another birthday.
Inigo, a study in green
I STILL haven’t finished dad’s 2007 birthday socks, and that is still top of the queue. But I am at the toe of the second sock, so I could finish them in an hour if I just had an hour to sit down and do it. I have an hour now, but I am blogging about it instead of doing it.
But I need to finish it, so that Dad can have his richly deserved socks, and so that I can move on to my next project – a cotton or bamboo cardi for ME.
I’m having an odd morning, and since I don’t really want to phone a friend and unload on them, I’ll do it here, and provide an opt out (if you don’t want to know, don’t read – simple).
The boy was really sick last night. Spewing heaps, full of mucous, and SCREAMING like he was being tortured. We were on the verge of putting him in the car and racing off to the hospital (apparently they have a new emergency Paediatrician!), when he calmed down and fell into a deep sleep. He’s vomited a lot, that’s not really new, but since he’s been on the Zantac, he’s been a lot less spewy, and a lot happier too.
Yesterday he was particularly unsettled, and obviously in pain for a lot of the day, but when he turned into Linda Blair it freaked us both out. Just as I turned to Mark and asked him what he thought about going to emergency, Inigo fell into a deep sleep. He slept from 11pm to 5.30am, and seems pretty good this morning. But of course, I’m still stressed!
Daisy (the long suffering feline) has been leaving odd wet patched where he has been sleeping, and I think he needs to go to the V.E.T. (we don’t say the word out loud).
And there’s other stuff too, which I won’t go into here because I don’t want to dwell on it, but suffice it to say that I’m feeling a little wobbly today. So the boy and I are off to visit Miriam and Oscar, and I’ll try to maintain my grip.
Feets by Inigo, Socks by Ailsa
Disco Knitter 