Life In Color

Thanks Brent!

Yesterday morning my brother called to tell me they had just been to an estate sale I should check out, full of sewing and crafty goodness. So Bj and I decided to take our walk early and go to it. Boy am I glad he called us, the house was a weird sort of time warp. It was right across the street from the big park (about a mile from our house) and looked like it hadn't been touched since 1972. It was very strange, and we were not the only ones who noticed. Yes a lot of times people have most of their things from a certain period if they are elderly, but this went beyond. One woman was pointing out to her friend that the canned three bean salad was from 1969 in the cupboard. Even the boxes of tissue were old and of the mint green variety. And unfortunately for me her fabric stash was nearly completely 100% polyesters. And there were a lot of them. But she wasn't just a hoarder, she used everything. She must have been tiny (judging by the pattern sizes), and quite proficient. It think almost all the jumpsuits were handmade. It was so interesting. I did get some great weird orange fabric to make monsters, and this:

A vintage boys pattern, a homemade jumper (love the button details), and some flannel fabric I've been looking for to make wipes out of. My favorite find was this:

A little vase with buttons. I cleaned the vase after I took this picture and it's a very lovely shade of chartreuse.

The buttons are fantastic. I started looking for ones that would work well with the yarn Kay gave me, but couldn't stop there. I also got some jars with neat lids and a vinyl tablecloth with that flocked backing. You may tell me that the odds of my water breaking in bed are slim but the thought of anything happening to our Tempurpedic (a wedding present from Bj's parents) sets my head spinning so come December I'm taking counter measures, JUST IN CASE.

I stayed true to my original plan to knit up some handspun I made a while ago instead of diving right into my new stuff. It's my old thick and thin:

It's going to be a baby blanket (per Sciarrino's suggestion), but here's the thing I very much miscalculated (and I was actually calculating with a gauge swatch and everything) the amount of yarn I have left. Now it seems that I will only get halfway. Of course I'm still knitting on it, why stop now? I'll have to spin something up to go with it I think, but don't have any more of this fiber... well, I'll come up with something. I do love how the fabric is turning out:

Hmm what else is going on besides me getting in a fight with Bj about paper towels (I blame hormones for the over reacting, but really how can you scrub something clean with a paper towel? They are for spills, and besides it's wasteful). Well my friend Matt came over on Friday and I told him we were having trouble coming up with a good idea for the front pouch. Matt just happens to be an architect, and drew up this in a few minutes:

(not the line drawing, that's something I did in Photoshop, but the orange). I love this idea and so does Bj. We were so perplexed with what to do with the weird angle of the one side of the roof and I think this will be a perfect solution, AND give us a bigger porch than we thought possible. So excited. I emailed the Cadman to see if he could do some specific drawings. What do you think?

Spun and Done

I finished this yummy yummy yarn, it took a while to dry as it is a bit damp around here (thank goodness, hot gets old to me).

There is so much yarn here! I did about 718 yards, 2 ply, fingering weight? It's 17 wpi, which means when you wrap it around a pencil for an inch it gets around it 17 times, so it's pretty thin. I'm thinking socks maybe? There is enough to do something bigger. I mean check out the size of this cake:

HUGE! Here is a Ravelry link for details. I also got something else to tempt me:

I ordered from Pigeonroof Studios, and oh my goodness is it fantastic. Check my flickr page for more of the fiber I could not pass up. Her shop sells out mega fast so I just kept hitting refresh whenever I would walk by my computer. I was going to knit, started swatching some of my older handspun for a baby blanket, but now...

Baby Love

Since I'm not done with the "yarn that will never end" I thought I'd share some lovely little things that I've gotten lately. My dad and brother might be more excited than anyone about the little one.

My dad got baby that little mini Roots shirt. I think the days of him coming back from vacation with things for me are over. He was so excited about this shirt, and yesterday he said, "um, it's not on the blog." hehehe, well it is now. My brother and his girlfriend got us these mini little socks. They are so ridiculously tiny, seriously. As if that wasn't enough I got a lovely package from Kay yesterday:

All these little sweet things. Including some oil for mama! I think I am going to line that fabric and make up a sling with it, it's pretty thick. The little onsie is so cute. I am going to need new words for this stuff, but cute just seems right. It almost looks like faded denim, lovely. And I love it when the snaps are off center. The little booties are so so cute too. I just can't believe the smallness sometimes. Oh and she threw in a little something extra:

Oh my goodness five beautifully soft balls of Jaeger Baby Merino (Ravelry Link). Can you believe I haven't made baby anything in yellow? I think I might do a cabled jacket and little pants. I haven't done big cabled things before, but I think I'm up for the challenge, and this yarn definitely calls for something special. Thanks again Kay!

In other baby goodness news Emilie and I wen to Portland yesterday so I could finish registering at Little Urbanites. A few weeks ago Bj and I went there when we were doing our stroller searching (I don't know if I said already but Uppa Baby's Vista had everything we wanted - and fit in the car!). I loved going through little toys, lights, blankets, and especially the clothes. Though Emilie did try to tempt me by showing me every single cute thing they had for girls in the shop (including Chase n' Sky Hawaii, a line by a friend of mine, so beautiful). I kept saying, "no Em, we're going for gender neutral!" She might have muttered under her breath that she was going to get me a certain ruffled jumper no matter what. A girl after my own heart. One thing is for certain no child of mine will have a "daddy's little princess" or "mommy's troublemaker" shirt. I'm not so much a fan of that kind of thing. Organic jumpers? Miniature hoodies (and we already have a cute cute mini white one from Bj's mom)? Hand knit things? Yes please! I figure I can be a bit picky about the first child, as hopefully I'll be the most organized this go round.

And it looks like we will be able to do the second story. Check it out:

See that way down there? A footing, boo-ya as Bj would say. We may still be required by the city to jack hammer up around one of our pilings in the basement to check the footings there, but we are almost positive that they are there because we replaced the top part (remember?). So it's good news. I also have an architect friend coming over tomorrow, and he might be able to come up with something for the front porch (we're having trouble coming up with a roof line that won't cover the window at the top). Now off to finish that yarn!

Spinning and Digging

Super busy crazy weekend. Good though, wedding + visits always equal good. On Friday night Sciarrino took me for an early birthday present to Eugene. We went to see this. So wonderful! Beautiful stories of birth, and strong woman we are not afraid to enjoy it! We also went to a fabulous yarn shop (check my ravelry page soon if you want to see the increase in my stash size!) and had Thai for dinner. Thanks Sciarrino it was awesome! We drove to and from Sisters, Oregon on Saturday (2 hours away). Remember that awesome weekend Sciarrino and I had with my mom's friends a month or so ago? It was at that house, and so beautiful. No I didn't bring my camera, but it was a perfect day. Picture sun, lots of lovely people, and a beautiful couple. After that excitement I got to see Brett, Michele and V on Sunday. I was just going to pop in, but they were headed to the pool so Michele and I got to have a wonderful chat while V played with her dad in this cute indoor pool. The rest of Sunday went by fast since I was spinning like mad, and yesterday I worked and Sciarrino and I ran some errands. I love having her in town, SERIOUSLY. Although she does try and stop me from buying things sometimes, what's that about Sciarrino? Mostly I've been working on this:

Thought you might like to see how the back yard is coming along. Yeah, right! Well we do have one thing going on back there.

My younger brother Taylor. And two hours later:

Thank god for that tree casting a shadow, it's about 95 out there. We have to dig down to see if our house has footings. Won't you please send good thoughts that it does? If not we'll have to dig down all the way around the house in sections and pour in a footing. That equals time + money. We did get  approval for a loan, but didn't include this in it, yikes! It's nice to have Taylor here. He doesn't like to spend a ton of time talking to me (I think it's the double whammy of me being 10 years older and not that cool, what 17 year old dreams about knitting?). But I got him lunch and we chatted about how excited he is for his senior year, and things he wants to do in college, good stuff. He's a pretty cool kid I think. What else?

Things are starting to come between me and my feet shots. Well one big thing: baby. I get those daily emails and it is 8.5 ounces now? Something like that. I might have felt the baby, but more than that I feel the uterus, it's weird, I feel like it's a big water balloon lodged in my belly. I like to poke it, but I don't like it when other people do. Yuck. Except Bj, he's really cute and likes to say hello to the baby all the time. Well off to update Ravelry...

Yummmmmm.

Public Service Announcement

There is out in Salem today the HOTTEST FEDEX GUY EVER. He just came to my door, and I swear to God, I thought I was getting punk'd or something. Easily the hottest guy I've ever seen in real like, maybe 5' 10", short dark hair, with a day's worth of stubble. He brought a package to the door and I couldn't even talk! Just thought I'd let the locals know.

Oh and yes Bj, this does mean your clothes came, and I still think you're the hottest guy for me!