Early Hours

There’s a little boy smiling at me from his place on the foam tile alphabet on the floor. I’m lucky that he is such a little charmer at 0500 hrs in the morning. It helps me get out of bed. Seeing as I’m getting up for him anyway, the fact that Iain is smiling when he wakes me up makes the whole process a lot more bearable.

Knitting has come to a grinding halt. I’m hopping on the Yarnhog bandwagon and announcing that I am not knitting any gifts for Christmas. What a great idea - I love Yarnhog! My joining the crowd is more of an affirmation as I was not really planning on knitting anything for anyone for Christmas this year. A number of years ago, Patty would be found up in the week hours of Christmas morning working frantically away at home-made presents. A few less years ago, however, I decided to stop that nasty tradition. Now, I look at my list and decide who will get the handmade gift this year, if anyone. I try and keep it to one handmade present a year. Yes, at this rate I’ll be 116 before everyone on my list gets anything home-made from me. That’s okay as I’ve long planned to live until I’m 116 anyways ;).

Despite my lack of current knitting, I would like to pull back the curtains to reveal my mystery FO. What’s it been – two years since I starting talking about my mystery WIP? Well, it has arrived at its final home. The recipient was one of my DH's Aunt J’s grand-nieces (there are two). I thought it would be nice for them to each have a sweater from their great-aunt’s stash which I inherited – almost like having a sweater from Great Aunt J herself. I hope to start on another sweater for grand-niece number two in 2008.

Until I get a photo of the sweater being modelled on a real person, you will have to make do with these shots. I took these photos in October (yes, I’m am hard up for current knitting content) and still had to meet anyone that it would fit locally who could model it for me.

Despite how long it took me to knit, I really enjoyed this project. The knitting was fun and I learned a great deal (e.g. how to knit a ruffled edge, perfecting my mattress stitch, three needle bind off, etc). The pattern is from Sirdar’s Kids in Denim book. I used Patons Astra’s Ultra Blue from my inherited yarn stash. I had to purchase two other balls of yarn – the pink (Patons Astra’s Hot Pink) as well as a non-lot matching Ultra Blue to finish the button bands and collar (including the ruffled collar). The new lot was a lot ‘shinier’ than the original colour and I didn’t like it as much. Despite my initial reservations when I saw this yarn, I think it is perfect for a child’s sweater and ended up really falling in love with the colour.


How is everybody doing out there? I haven’t been able to conduct my usual blog perusing in many weeks so my apologies for my lack of comments on your blogs. Now that our house is almost back in order, DH is away most of the week AND we’re hosting around 30 of his work colleagues here for an Open House on the 16th. Therefore, this will likely be another week marked by a lack of blogging and reading. Bear with me – tis the season after all!

Between Visitors

We are between visitors at Chez Fibreholic. Mudder and Fadder left this morning, which made us sad, and DH’s parents and sister arrive tomorrow evening. The house is no longer such a wreck. Well, it’s still a wreck but my parents made a significant dent in alleviating that problem. Our living room is "almost" finished ("almost" only because I decided to experiment with colour on the fireplace wall and I hate the colour so we will have to repaint that little section). The painting is complete in Iain’s room and in the two closets upstairs so, apart from the doors to one closet, one bedroom and the bathroom which we’d intended on doing at some point in the future, the upper floor is complete – yeah!

I found a mother and baby group at the local hospital, which is a 5 minute walk from our house. It is held on Thursday afternoons and it was very nice for Iain to see other babies his age. He was fascinated and sat on my lap for the longest time and just stared around at all the little people. I also got a chance to weigh him – at exactly 3 months today (where has the time gone?), Iain Daniel weighs in at 15 lbs 10 ozs! Apparently, I’m making the good stuff. There are a couple of other mother and baby programs in town that I’m going to explore next week.

Grandma and Grandpas’s visit marks several major ‘firsts’ in young Iain’s life. However, I’m only going to tell you about two of them today.

To start, witness Iain’s first foray into knitting reading.

Iain loves to see babies (we keep showing him the baby in the mirror and he always smiles and smiles at himself) and, as Mags Candis’ Wee Knits 3 book is full of babies in sweaters, this was Grandma’s solution to a fussy Iain. He looks so serious!

And, secondly, here is a photo from Iain’s first overnight camping trip (you are an inspiration, Samantha! Ethan beat Iain to his first camping trip but at least we got out in 2007)!

We stayed at the local Canadian Forces campground at Lake Pleasant last Saturday evening (September 29th). It was a cold night but we managed just fine. Iain did wonderfully. He snuggled up and watched the campfire after I nursed him at the picnic table. We slept in the camper so Iain and I had the bottom double bed and DH and Para shared the top double bed (the bed in the pop up top). Apparently, Iain and I were more comfortable than DH who was a little chilly all night.

Here’s Iain roughing it Sunday morning.

I was really concerned about how cold it would be when changing Iain during the night but there was no issue there. I just hauled our huge 8 point Hudson Bay Company wool blanket over my and Iain’s head to make a cozy ‘tent’ and changed him under there. He just giggled and laughed which means he wasn’t cold at all. One of the few times Iain is almost guaranteed to screech during a 24 hours period is when he is being changed at night as he doesn’t like to be undressed and get cold after he’s been deeply asleep. Therefore, the blanket solution worked out.

I also got to knit a little while we were camping. Be still my beating heart…I guess I’ll have to provide more detailed proof soon but, my mystery WIP is finished.

Therefore, I was actually working on new knitting while we camped. Be still my beating heart once more…

In other news, Friday, Mudder and I visited my LYS again this past Friday. It was heaven. It was also incentive to get the mystery WIP completed as DH and I had a deal that I would not purchase more yarn until it was finished and Friday was a wee bit premature to be purchasing yarn. I hope to post some knitting candy photos tomorrow before the visitors arrive. I also have a photo for Samantha’s meme but will post that a little later as I want to tell you all about another Iain Daniel first when we went apple picking in the Annapolis Valley. My self-portrait photo was taken there…