Harrumph

Feeling rather harrumphy. For no good reason really--got an unusual amount of sleep for me (much better than three hours the night before), brought leftover steak and potatoes (hey, I need iron) for lunch today so I don't have to go out into the scalding heat in a panic over what to eat. Reading a really funny book which Dave will kill me if I don't mention by name and hey listen, I already gave my OB the hard sell, so give me a break okay? And oh yeah, it's Cooking Dirty. Which Laura, I confess I hadn't read yet, except for bits and pieces, but I am now and it's called Cooking Dirty. There, I said it again.

But I just can't seem to shake the harrumphs. I put on the very cutest sundress I have, and while it's not especially flattering to my new abdominal shape, it still has bows and ruffles and they're enough to cheer anybody up, right?

Part of the problem may be that I apparently have something ten inches long inside of me and I have no earthly idea where that could possibly fit. Something six inches long, maybe. If it nestled gently between my spleen and my liver and did its best not to move or disturb anything. Which, clearly, it is not doing.

Yep, I can feel the baby moving finally. And I'm sorry to malign you like that, baby--I really can barely feel it, it's more just like something wriggling or occasionally very gently poking me. Swimmyswimmy, taptaptap. But that begs the question--how can something ten inches long be so very...unintrusive? Such a polite little child you are. But things are feeling a bit squashed in there, like all my organs are crammed into the back seat of the car like a family with six kids and a Neon.

Maybe I can distract myself with talk of the knitting. On the car ride back and forth from the Cape, I made great progress on a baby blanket:


Inspired in equal parts by Baby Surprise Jacket, and that most comforting of knitted items, textured shawl, this is something I imagined up and decided to try doing it. I discovered yesterday that somebody already designed a concentric squares baby blanket, but it looks like they did it using the plan-things-out-before-you-knit-them technique, which I've never mastered. This one is just increase along the four points until you feel like you've done it enough, and stop. The yarn is somewhat silly for a baby blanket--Knitpicks Alpaca Silk. But I wanted something fuzzy but not too fuzzy, and very soft. And I'll know better than to throw it in the washer and dryer.

The problem with this method, of course, is that you go great guns at the beginning, and it's all very interesting, and now it's taking me an hour to complete a round. (My friend Adelaide, who is just finishing up Girasole at my suggestion, has no sympathy for me. What she does have is a million circular needles in US6).

In even more boring knitting, I finally completed the six baby burp cloths I set myself to make:

Calling them boring isn't exactly fair. Individually, they're quite interesting, in that they're all in fun-but-simplish stitch patterns, and have a texture and cottony homespuniness that is quite pleasing.

But when you knit six of them in a row, you tend to develop a certain dislike of them. I would advise against it.

They're knit using the twelve unused skeins of Elann Undyed Ramie/Cotton (now discontinued) that I had sitting in a bag for, oh, four years without any idea what to do with them. The burp cloths are perfect. The yarn softened up with knitting and even more with washing--and this is something you can just toss in the washer--and they're the same color as the burp so that'll work out nicely.

And they are very homespun indeed. (Don't you just love that lamp? It was a wedding present from my friend Wendy, and had been living in the knitting room, but is just so perfect for a baby room that it's moved).

There. I feel better already. Boring knitting accomplished, which means it's boring knitting I don't have to do now. Well done.