WIPWed #122: Enjoying the Process

After my previous post bemoaning my strained relationship with time, I’m doing my best to enjoy this current time… which is mostly being spent growing a baby. The third trimester has been surprisingly pleasant so far. Other than a bit of insomnia and the aches and pains that go along with an ever-growing belly, I’ve felt pretty high energy and optimistic lately. I think it helps that we’re getting close: less than 8 weeks to go. (LESS THAN 8 WEEKS?!?!?!) It also helps that I have a very active kid. I like feeling his kicks, it’s a reminder that this whole thing is happening for a reason. Sometimes it’s super distracting, especially now that I can watch my belly move from the outside. And it definitely helps that I’ve had two baby showers in the past two weeks – celebrating a thing always makes it more fun, am I right?

Last weekend was the shower thrown by my mother-in-law and her sisters. I really lucked out in the in-law department, they’re such a fun, welcoming, warm group of people, and they’re always laughing. There were silly games, a diaper cake, aloe plants as favors for everyone, lots of gifts, and a string of adorable onesies, some of which had been worn by the Fiasco and all three of his brothers! My MIL is the best at hanging on to things and passing them down, it’s super impressive. I’ve spent much of the week since doing more baby laundry and organizing the nursery. This kid already has all the equipment he’ll need, a toy box full of stuffed animals, and a basket full of books! Spoiled rotten, I tell you.

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Slooooooooooooooow shawl progress.

Since all my other knits need some attention at the moment, the only thing I’ve been working on lately is my Beholden shawl. It’s growing slowly, but I’m savoring the process because the camel/silk yarn I’m using is straight-up delicious. My needles are doing an annoying thing where they partially unscrew every few rows, but other than that I’m loving this knit. I do need to make a decision soon about when to switch to the edging pattern. I’ve modified the pattern to be slightly wider (increasing 2 extra stitches every other WS row) so I’m wandering into unknown territory yardage-wise. It would be a shame to run out of yarn as it’s from the UK and would be difficult to get my hands on more of it.

Spinning has not been happening lately, but I am planning to go to my spinner’s guild meeting this weekend and I’m hoping I can finish the yarn I’ve been working on since f*&%#ing October. We’ll see…

I’m sort of in between books right now but just finished reading Mink River by Brian Doyle and it was both fascinating and fabulous. The style was unlike anything I’ve read in quite a while: stories about multiple main characters pieced out in little vignettes interspersed with sections of sensory-rich prose poetry. It was both fantasy and realistic fiction, and it had some great naturalist touches. In short: I really liked it.

Hope you’re having wonderful weeks! Now that the sun’s been out on the regular I’m hoping I can get a decent FO picture of the shawl I finished WEEKS AGO to show you all soon. Linking up with Yarnalong.

 

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Little Peanut

We’ve just returned from being thoroughly showered with love for our pending Hatchling. We are quite lucky in that we are having several showers, this one was thrown by my family on Long Island. It was a busy weekend full of lovely details.

My mom went nuts for the elephant theme, and it was super adorable. I told her there was no theme for the baby’s room or anything, but she saw me buy a cute elephant toy box once… and that was that. 🙂 There were elephant invitations, elephant cake, elephant confetti, centerpieces made of blue elephant pails holding peanuts, elephant toys as gifts, and soaps labeled with little elephants for favors. SO MANY ELEPHANTS.

She also gave us a ‘baby’s first’ onesie for every holiday of Hatchling’s first year! Beginning with the 4th of July, this baby will be appropriately decked-out for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and his first birthday. I thought this was such a sweet idea.

I had a bunch of fun spending some quality time with the nephews I don’t see nearly enough, snuggling with Logan and getting silly with Liam (both also known as Batman, they wore those capes all day).

As soon as we got home we sorted through all the lovely gifts we were given. The Fiasco got right down to it and built the crib and changing table, and now our office/baby room looks MUCH more like an actual nursery. And even though it won’t be used for a couple more months, I couldn’t resist putting together this sweet little sheep-y bounce chair because it’s just about the cutest thing on Earth.

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Black Trillium Fibre Pebble Sock gradient in Pease. Click for project page.

I also couldn’t help myself and started a new project for the trip. I made good progress on a fingering weight Newborn Vertebrae open-front cardi for the Hatchling. I think it’ll be super cute in the gradient and a lightweight way to keep him warm over the summer if/when needed.

And that was my weekend! Hope yours was lovely, too.