Life In Color

Mostly fiber related, spinners check in!

With a little Tuesday thrown in...

Because this thing called a nap? Have you heard of it? It is AWESOME!

Now for spinners, I have this idea:
So I just signed up for Funky Carolina's Scrappy Club where you get a bunch of her awesome fibers in a tiny little bunches. Here is an example, and here is an example of one of those bunches spun up. What I was thinking was a swap where spinners could piece off little bits of fiber from various stash bundles that they have to total up four ounces and I could randomly assign a partner to send it to. In return you'd get a four ounce bundle of different fibers to play with. That's my rough outline anyway. Anyone interested? If so I'll put together actual guidelines and a sign up. I'm interested to know how many spinners are out there anyway - hello, hello?

Now I might as well show you some pretty fiber-goodness pictures:

The cool half of my Spunky Eclcetic semi-solid merino sampler.

And some batts from her shop. I've never spun batts before so I'm excited about these. Mmm they look like cotton candy to me, and I love cotton candy!

And I got her club. I know crazy fiber around here, good thing Tuesday seems to like watching the wheel go round, for little bits of time anyway!

Oh and one more picture of Tuesday for kicks:

Sparkle pants is wearing a handknit sweater from my friend, jeans (without crotch snaps - so cute!), and foot finders. Kay I remember you getting some of these for your brother's baby in Maine. I asked you what foot finders were and you said, "Where are my feet? There they are!"

Ebbs and Flows

It's strange that the good and bad days in my life right now are so tied to sleep. We go from wake up happiness:

To insane tiredness:

And everything else in between in the course of a day. I realize more and more how much I need other people to help me, and that can be a hard thing to figure out when you're like me and want to do it all. There is no way I can. Today lunch was brought to me, my mom came over to take my packages to the post office, and I called a neighbor to hold Tuesday so I could fix dinner since Bj was still at work. I also got Tuesday to take a 20 minute nap (not on me) and did a little spinning. I think those tiny bits of me time are going to be my sanity. Back to the photo journal of my day.

New toy. She will play with this for five minutes by herself, but half an hour or more if you shake it and talk to her about all the parts. She really is getting so social! Also I love this sweater my mom knit her. She has been the spit up queen lately (Tuesday, not my mom), so I have a tub full of woolens to wash tomorrow.

The first bobbin is finished, now on the second, hoping to get a third done and make a true 3-ply (fiber from Squoosh). Now that we're using the sling I can do a little more on the computer. I was able to stock the Hello Yarn update and got a few things.

And when my mom stopped by she brought her new camera! Not bad considering the lack of sleep and make up!

Well I'm going to go try to get this little bird to sleep!

Lots of Pictures... you've been warned.

My sweet baby girl decided to give us a wonderfully relaxing weekend, with lots of naps and sleeping in. I attribute that all to this:

Near constant eating. Seriously, and you can tell she's gotten so much bigger!

(more of this series to come, we were having lots of fun with her tonight). She still is, of course very tiny because she's a baby! Six weeks old yesterday, craziness.

Her first sink bath. She loved it, of course, she's a water nut.

Tiny feet. Okay I'm officially not on any topic for this post, just Tuesday love.

My favorites from tonight:

and then...

He always gets her to smile like this.

But I bet I can get you to smile like that:

What? I was doing it for scale. :)

Okay I cut that down from 30 pictures (which I cut down from the 100s I've taken this weekend). I don't think I'll ever get over that this is my daughter and that she is so fantastic! I love her little personality and just seeing her change everyday, it's the most wonderful thing.

Future projects

Oh my little bird, she is so cute!

I keep saying that but she keeps getting cuter every day so what am I supposed to say? 30 minutes after I posted the last entry she went to sleep. Imagine my shock when Bj woke me up at 7 to say he thought she needed to be fed... we didn't wake up once in the night! I don't think this will be a regular thing, as she needs to nurse, but the day before we were up in Portland all day and she never napped so I think she really just wore herself out. And last night she did another good night of sleep, but with little eating breaks. Then after we played in the morning for an hour we went back to sleep... until noon. It was wonderful, I really hope I'm raising someone who likes to sleep in, because I really do.

Those very late nights now seem very far back in the distance. She still keeps me plenty busy during the day though, so I'm not sure when I'll have time to tackle this pile:

Mmm yummy new fabric. Our local quilt shop has loyalty punch cards, and I had two full I'd been saving. Their newsletter highlighted this awesome space fabric, so I went to get some for Tuesday, and got a bunch of other fun things as well. I hope to do something like this someday... maybe before she grows into a toddler bed? Ya, that's a good goal.

I guess I should have seen this coming...

Ah my little princess is still up (it's currently 12:05 in the morning). And she has napped for a total of I would say 50 minutes today. It's a good thing she is so freaking cute:

She really, really, really likes diaper free time, can you tell?

What a little goof ball.

And boy is she growing! This is a totally different baby from one week ago... she's getting chub! It's so cute. She's so long, her head is bigger, and she is up and alert the whole day (um obviously). I love her oh so much! Now if I could just get a little sleepy sleepy :)

8.5 hours of sleep

Plus three nursing breaks equals one happy baby (and mama)! We love chatting it up in the mornings :) Now I'm just waiting for the bomb to drop... she no longer poops in the middle of the night, which makes that first diaper a little scary.

Bouncy bouncy

That is the only reason I am posting right now... because I'm sitting on an exercise ball and wearing Tuesday, which I don't mind at all. She has been like this a lot:

Pick me up, pick me up (I think she might also be saying, "knit me a hat that fits!" since she is growing so fast). One of the side effects of her wanting to grow is having to nurse - something we are doing a lot of! It must be that six week growth spurt (she is six weeks Saturday). She is getting lots of cuddling too:

My dad came over to drop off a valentine's present for Tuesday (little red mary janes so cute!), and I said, "oh can you hold her real quick while I pee?" This is very common for me to do when someone comes over. He ended up getting her to sleep and I even got a snack in, we love it when grandparents come to visit! Speaking of, Bill took this of me and her:

Which is awesome because I don't have a ton of us together. I see how it happens now, a combination of always being behind the camera and having just bought size 12 (I know!) jeans. Yikes, can't wait to be cleared to do baby and mama yoga soon. Tuesday is being awesome having so much awake and alert time (it's much nicer than awake and upset time). She likes to lay on the floor and make crazy faces:

To be fair we are making faces back at her:

Bj can always get her to smile. I try not to take it too personally, I think I might be too common of a site. I have been getting very little crafting time in, a tiny bit of spinning:

(this fiber) And making a little bit of progress on the baby surprise jacket. I've also been enhancing my yarn stash by trading on Ravelry (double score).

In case you think I'm doing it all...

I am so not. The craft den is turning into a holy disaster:

My wanting built in cabinets in here (and ah curtains) might go from a want to a NEED. I have to keep all this space on the floor open for crazy baby paraphernalia. I should put this on flickr and add notes but I think there would have to be too many notes, like how I'm sitting on that ball right now because someone (cough - Tuesday - cough) decided being worn was not enough. She must be worn and bounced. Crazy monkey.

Red tongue courtesy of my horrible father who has no scruples and gave us this for Christmas:

Which is probably why my baby weight loosing has slowed down. Mmmm I should put the rest of those on some ice cream...
I started another project yesterday during Tuesday's epic nap on mama (while I watched TV!!!):

A baby surprise jacket that's already been on four sets of needles and is about to be put on it's fifth. I have a knit picks options set and the size 6 tips are MIA. I asked Sciarirno about it (I think she gets at least one call a week from me that starts like this, "hey I know this is a long shot but have you seen my _____________") and she said that yes she did have them and attached them to my Christmas present so they wouldn't get lost. Of course once she said that I remembered her doing that, now I'm just hoping I didn't throw away the box with the needles on it. And I'm admitting right now that Bj and I can not remember what you got us for Christmas and we're terrible people and could you remind me so that I can... oh wait the bowl! Hmm, no no needles in there, damn. Anyway who only has one size 6 sets of tips? I hear a knit picks order in my future because straights are a no go for this project, and those plastic circulars masquerading as knitting needles? Those are going in the garbage, yuck! Not even good enough to goodwill (which might be where I got them). On a side note I love this Socks that Rock yarn so much, why am I freaking out about Sundara updates?

I would like to tell you that Tuesday wakes up cuter each day. I didn't think it was possible but this morning she was even cuter smiling at me like I wasn't the crazy sleep deprived person I am (or maybe that is why she was smiling). I brought the camera up last night thinking she might do this again (yesterday she started it), but my wonderful photography skills managed to get this as the best shot:

Ah ha ha ha. Someone mentioned they see grandpa in her, and I do here! I was going to leave it at that but I put her in this cute outfit Carmen made, so I unwrapped her and took her to the couch during a brief period of only semi-overcastness (vs. near constant gray):

"ugh mama no -too bright" (I'm beginning to see less and less of myself in this child and more of Bj, seriously.)

Stretch it out.

It's hard work being such a cute little baby. Side note: I have got to find more of these Zutano booties on sale!

Carmen we want another one of these in the next biggest size please! When you get that crazy nesting energy start sewing!

Go it alone

Today Tuesday and I had a big adventure - we went shopping alone! Not just a little dash in either. It was a bit of work and involved a few breaks - nursing and a diaper change, but we did it! She totally rocked today:

Had to get some more changing table pictures of her because this is the last time in the Oregon onsie!

We love Erin's batiks!

And our special green diaper from Katie. :)

"Enough mama! It's time to eat!"

Visitors

The last few days have been all about baby holding. Bj's mom came to visit and nana was a big hit (nap time for mama!). Sarah (I just looked at her blog, duplicate entry :) came over on Saturday and we had a so much fun visiting, eating cake, and going on a walk.
 
The last pictures of crazy face with the green sweater, she's getting so big!

Hehehe. Because of all the holding I was able to open and photograph some new stash enhancements.

This yarn is from a local etsy seller and is made up of reclaimed sock yarn... a cool idea, I'll let you know if it really knits up with out noticing the joins. And here is some of the yummy fiber I got from Squoosh:

I have already spun up one chunk of fiber, this lovely merino/bamboo blend:

I made a single last night during a little nappy nap.

 But it's been a while and the extra twist was insane:

I hung it weighted and it's drying now, I think most of it will come out. And I think I am going to leave it as a single, maybe make a really soft hat? I don't know when I'll get much knitting time. I was knitting while nursing, but now that Tuesday eats so much faster I don't have the time. I have just been staring at her while she nurses. She's so wonderful, and getting so expressive, I love it. I can't believe she's a month old already! Today I got to experience my first parent inflicted baby torture; Tuesday had her newborn hearing screening.

They had to scrub her head extra hard because of all the fine little hairs there. And we had already kept her up and hungry for the last few hours because she needed to be ready to sleep hard when she got in, and I knew that was the only way she would. So by the time they hooked all this stuff up to her she was like, "why mama, why?!?!" But then she nursed and slept through the whole thing (1.5 hours). I wanted to sleep so bad. A dark, quite room and I was sitting in a recliner. It's sort of new parent torture. Bj was on a little chair next to me and he was so close to crashing too.

It looks comfortable, but I couldn't move because of all the wires. Oh, her hearing is perfect by the way :)

More adventures to come!