Knitting Iris

Fingerless Mitts, pair #3

I quickly knit these up for a friend over the weekend.  They're another Noro Kureyon colorway (#148?).

February Socks

My February socks are done for the  Sock-a-Month 2006 Knit-along, just under the wire.  Whew!  One was done before the Olympics, and one during and after.

It is Regia #5180.  This was the first jacquard/fair isle self- striping yarn that I saw, while we were staying in Saint Louis for a few months during winter 2001/2002.  A person working at Pennie's Place, a yarn store there, was knitting with it, 2 socks on 2 circulars.  I had never seen either the yarn or the method before.  She didn't have any in stock yet, but I found a similar all- greys colorway at Hearthstone Knits.

Olympic Shawl Blocked

We're off skiing in Kimberly, B.C. for the weekend with my parents.  No time for better pictures or cropping.  This rug, hanging on our wall, which C brought back from Syria years ago, was the only place I could find for blocking.  It worked pretty well, I'd say.

Bumpy knitting

The FBS is off the needles!  Something about the bumps on the backside of this shawl remind me of the fine gauge, machine knit, machine washable, acrylic, lacy sweaters my grandma (Nana) and great-grandma (Gramma) wore.  You know the kind?  It seems that more often than not they were white or off-white, with a slightly bumpy diamond pattern.  The bumps in the shawl also remind me of egg-carton foam mattresses, which also brings Nana and Gramma to mind.  Hmmm. 

I went looking and found this picture of my great grandmother, Gramma, wearing a similar one with me sitting in her lap in her yard in Seattle, marked September 1971 on the back, right around when I turned 2 years old.  She was born in the 1880's so she would have been close to 90 years old when this picture was taken.  I still have that same Volkswagen that I'm holding in the picture.

I tried to block the shawl the other day but was too pressed for time and got annoyed with it.  I'll have to rewet it and give it another go.  It's time for the bumps to go and the flower baskets to emerge.   

6 x 3 = 18

When he turned one month old, I did the math: 1 month x 12 = 1 year, and 1 year x 18 = "he's out the door".  I was appalled at how quickly that first month had gone by and how few months there would be before his 18th birthday.  But here we are already and the numbers are now 6 years x 3 = 18.  How can this be?

And yet he's not so big that he can't have a complete meltdown from sugar and birthday excitement at the end of the evening.  And he's still little enough to think that grandparents are the best thing going.  And he's still little enough to ask that his Mama read to him at bedtime, after such an overly-exciting day... instead of his visiting grandparents.

Six.  He's so right there on the brink between little boy and big boy.

6 Years Ago today...

...we were at the hospital having a non-stress test done, because I was showing signs of pregnancy-induced high blood pressure.  As they were finishing up the test, I felt what would turn out to be the beginnings of labor.

Most people go to the hospital when they are in labor, right?  Us?  We walk out.

After confirming with our midwife that yes, indeed, we were in labor, we drove the hour long drive back to our house, hoping to give birth in our own home, but with the agreement that if my blood pressure went above a certain level, we would drive the hour back to the hospital in Whitefish.

Awhile later, the midwives, a friend, and C's sister all showed up at our house but unfortunately my blood pressure was too high.  We called a doctor/friend of ours to tell him that we were going to our midwife's house to labor a little longer, and we asked him if he would meet us later at the hospital to deliver* our child.  He said, "No," he wouldn't meet us there, but that he would come to the midwife's house, a few minutes from the hospital, and be on hand through the labor just in case we needed to transfer to the hospital.

Never did he, or our midwife, feel the need to transfer, although my blood pressure remained a bit high throughout the labor.  Neither I, nor the baby, ever showed any unusual signs of stress.  He stood by only as back up, and as moral support for us, all evening and into the middle of the night.  When R was born at 1:35 a.m., he pulled out his fiddle and played for us.

So, no, we did not give birth in our own home, but we did have a home birth, in the house pictured above, with the help and support of friends and family, a professional, confident, caring midwife and assistant, and a doctor who believes in home births although he cannot, himself, practice them.  He's the one who referred us to our midwife in the first place.

Today, I had some last-minute birthday shopping to do for tomorrow's party, in and around Whitefish, and in so doing, I unintentionally drove right by that house and the hospital, too.  It brought me right back to that amazing day, 6 years ago.  Only, there is/was snow on the roof and all around on the ground, unlike this picture taken on a sunny September day a few years ago.

*deliver a baby:  I cannot stand that phrase.  It sounds too much like you're going to remove a vital organ, as in de-liver.

Icy Sun Catchers

Martha had these in one of her Christmas issues with evergreen branches and berries  frozen into them, but a friend of mine was making these long before Martha ever did, only she used jar lids and garbage can lids with twine or rope loops frozen into them by which to hang them.  The ones in the top picture are the first ones we did (The crystal in the foreground is hanging inside the window, btw).  The bottom picture is our next batch in progress.  Hopefully it will stay cold long enough for them to freeze!

Olympic Knitting Update:  After 9 repeats of the lower basket chart, I'm into the edging chart!  Just as I was finally getting the hang of the pattern, it'll be done soon.   The other evening, we had dinner with Shannon and her fiance while they were in town at her (fabulous!) parents' (fabulous!) house and I saw the FBS that she made for her mom, as well as her Kiri shawl, both made from Socks That Rock yarn (her STR Jaywalkers, too).  They were both beautiful and so different than this one I'm making from alpaca.  We even watched a tiny bit of bobsledding on T.V. and both worked a bit on our Olympic Knitting projects, hers being a pair of fair isle socks in STR yarn, of course.  I can hardly believe it:  I got to sit and knit with a real, live knitting blogger!  We got to talk yarn as only those who are obsessed do!  Fun, fun.

Heart wood

Shadows.

Abandoned

This is my favorite of the 3 pictures I've posted over the past few days.  More and more structures like these are succumbing either to the snow, gravity, or demolition crews.  There is high quality wood in some of these old barns that you just doesn't exist "new" anymore.  Everything of that quality and size has been logged. 

C is starting to incorporate old, reclaimed barn wood into his work more and more lately, either with the character of the roughness intact, or planed down to smooth wood again.  It's what a lot of people are looking for these days, and it's "green".  It's hard to see these old structures come down, but at least it's being put to good use and preventing, hopefully, at least a few other trees from being logged. 

Down the road a bit

These mountains might seem big, but they really do pale in comparison to those just north of us in the Canadian Rockies, and to those we lived near in Colorado.   Here, we're at 3,500 ft elevation and the highest points of these mountains are around 7,000 ft or so.  In Crested Butte, I spent a winter at 9,000 ft, surrounded by 14,000 foot peaks.  Even in Boulder, we were at 5,400 feet with the mountains rising straight up out of the plains, a few blocks from our house, to 14,000 feet or so.

Olympic Knitting:  had dinner at C's sister's.  Afterwards, we watched a bit of the Olympics but with 7 adults, 7 kids, 2 dogs, and 5 cats there was too much distraction to work on the FBS.  I kept knitting and taking up the same 10 stitches until finally giving up on it for the evening.