Back from the Dead Again

I love TV shows where death is not an obstacle to a character's return... anything from the old fashioned "I jumped out of the train before the bomb went off" to "I'm dead but you can talk to me anyway because the rules of time don't apply to you any more" to something truly excellent like "I'm a copy stuck in a robot's body" or "this part of me lives in your mind due to our shared consciousness." (Care to name those sources sci-fi buffs?)

I'm living a new life over here... life with a baby, but perhaps it won't be an obstacle to my return.

One thing I should mention is that Mr. M and I have decided to limit how much we put out there about baby Bee. For now, if you want to see pictures of her, the best ways will be facebook or flickr (you'll have to be a friend on flickr because baby content will be protected). So drop me a line if you want in on that. We want to share her with our friends and family far away, but we also want more privacy than the world wide web affords. I know other people who have followed a different path quite happily, but this is right for us right now.

For a while, this choice has had me stumped. My brain is 95% baby, 4% work and 1% crafts. So I felt like I didn't know what to say here if I couldn't just post 100 pictures a day of the cutest baby ever the Bee, but I do want to keep this space, and I guess we will have to see what it sort of blog it becomes.

I have been knitting a bit while the Bee nurses, so right now I have about 70% of a BSJ out of this lovely Hello Yarn Fat Sock, colorway "Valentine."



The Bee just outgrew her first mama made sweater (at about 3.5 months & 14lbs), so the rush is on to make another one!

A Very Small Sweater

Minutes after I told my husband we were expecting, we had this conversation:

Him: "So, are you going to knit something for the baby?"
Me: "But we don't know if it is a boy or a girl."
Him: "You could knit a brown sweater."

How could I refuse a suggestion like that? I did almost immediately start a brown baby sweater, but with pregnancy fatigue and pregnancy brain, I didn't get around to sewing on the buttons and photographing it until this week. So, here it is, the baby's official first sweater...



Knitting details are here. My major advice is to be careful with superwash yarn. I didn't block
my swatch and the sweater developed an unexpectedly floppy texture after washing. But no harm done.

Mending

I'm home mending from some virus that declared war on my lungs. Along with the napping, fluid drinking, and doctor's office calling, there have been some moments of fun...



5 Plum Pie
Hello Yarn Fiber Club (begged)
4.o oz, yardage... um 200?

Before I was stricken, I spun this from the fold. Probably not an orthodox choice, but I found it easier to spin a fine(r) yarn from a large diameter top that way. The color transitions are long and have that wonderful quality of being somewhat barber-poled... I think you can see here a green bit with a brown bit... that makes a long stretch of green/brown yarn. Yummy. A kindly raveler sold this 4 oz, and another kindly raveler sold me a second 4 oz when I realized I had half the yardage I expected. The kindness of knitters to the rescue! If I have energy enough to be decisive, I will cast on either a Baktus or Feather & Fan Comfort Shawl this evening.

My lovely goodies also arrived from my swap partner:



Thank you, Paula! They are right next to the dining room table where I can look at them every day.

And there is also a cute little sweater that I finally found a moment to get buttons onto:



Babies grow fast, so it's good to get this finished a few months before my friend is due!