Category Archives: Knitting, Spinning, & Weaving

Random Updates From Daily Life

(This was written, then I forgot to hit publish. Your RSS feeds aren’t confused; I backdated it to when it should have appeared.)

Owlet is walking, albeit stealthily. This morning I watched from the kitchen as she stood up in the middle of the living room, bounced in place for a bit, looked over at her toys by the wall, and walked over to them before plopping herself down. Ha ha; we see you, baby. It’s not a secret.

Sparky starts camp on Monday. His info packet arrived a few days ago, and his personal schedule came by e-mail. Guess who needs his own set of drumsticks? (We have one. It’s just amusing.) He’s doing science, karate, choir, drums, and art/cartooning. We also got the info packet for the International School, so we have supply lists and fee deadlines and so forth. He’s going to start halfway through the last week of August, and the first two days are mornings only, with the Friday being the first whole day, followed by the three-day Labour Day weekend. The ped days at this school are scattered through the weeks instead of being clumped into a long weekend, which is nice in a way.

HRH has painted the front awning! (Or whatever the thing over the front door is called. We call it the awning, even though it’s solid.) It was a horrible faded purple, once brown, we suspect. I chose a lovely dark green, and it looks wonderful. He’s going to continue the green up around the trim that’s the same faded purple-brown later this year when it isn’t so stupidly humid and hot. Next year we’ll tackle scraping and repainting the white ironwork and it will be the finishing touches on the front exterior.

(That’s actually not a very good colour match for the real thing. It looks more blue than dark green here. But anyway.)

I’m participating in the Tour de Fleece for the first time this year. (I’ve also signed up for the Ravelymics Ravellennic Games for the first time. Hanging out with my online July 2011 babies group of knitting mamas is doing weird things to me.) My personal goals were to spin for about fifteen minutes a day, to sample the Teeswater I got in a swap last year, to sample the Cormo/silk that Bonnie blended, and to attempt a new technique like corespinning. So far I am good on the first two, so now I get to choose one of the last two and give it a go. I’ve got one week left.

I received another freelance project, this one editing a YA science-fiction/paranormal title. My publisher recently launched a couple of fiction imprints, one for YA, and so this is my first pro fiction copyedit. It’s very exciting. I’m ahead of schedule because it’s good and an easy read. This is a nice switch from trudging through the fiction manuscripts from the self-publisher I used to work for, where I had to read them in order to evaluate them. I was instructed to edit this with a very light hand, which also helps. It’s also a nice switch from the last book I edited, a non-fiction book on manicure art, where I handed it back more red than black after rearranging and rephrasing and clarifying steps. Step-by-step instruction is hard to write for most authors, pro or not, so a lot gets reworked in the editing stage to clarify what the reader doesn’t know simply because they’re not the author.

Owlet: Four Weeks

Technically four weeks was yesterday, but we didn’t want to take anything away from the boy’s special day. (Speaking of which, we got a garbled report of the first day of school, and it sounded like there was some weird kind of grade one/new kindergarten split class happening, which is mystifying, because kindergarten is so labour-intensive for a teacher I cannot imagine one having time to teach grade one as well. Any split class is hard to juggle, but K/1? Very odd. We should get intro letters today or next Tuesday clarifying things. On the other hand, the grade one desks were set up in the boy’s old kindergarten room, with his old teacher, so maybe he’s mixing up last year being kindergarten with having the same teacher and room for grade one?)

Anywhats.

At four weeks old, Miss Owlet is starting to smile at people. She’s filling out a bit, although she’s still tiny and thin; I can see folds beginning to develop in the skin of her arms and legs. We’ve moved from newborn to size 1 disposable diapers (we use them at night while she’s still soiling so many diapers, because she sleeps downstairs with us and all her cloth diapering stuff is upstairs, and trust me, you don’t want us carrying her upstairs while half-asleep or trying to handle the mess of cloth in the wee smas on the bed). Except when I went out yesterday to buy new ones I bought the newborn size again, and while they fit, they’re tight. Same with the cloth diapers: the newborn size covers we use with flats are a just-fit, but the small covers and prefold diapers are still too big.

She’s gaining weight slowly. Last week she passed her birthweight, hurrah! A week late, but she got there. I had an unpleasant experience with a CLSC nurse who told me she wasn’t gaining enough or fast enough even with the supplement four or five times a day, and that I had to supplement her more. I couldn’t, I told her, because I couldn’t pump any more milk. “You’ll have to use formula, then,” she said right away, and I was stunned. She didn’t seem to listen to me when I explained that we were a week behind because of nursing issues in the first ten days, which explained her apparent slowness, and didn’t even address the other health concerns I brought up. It’s my right to ignore the health advice given to me, so I did. Instead, I started taking fenugreek to boost milk production (just to get a head start on a freezer stash, since supply is not the problem; it’s that we can’t make a baby who is satiated eat any more than she already does, and that baby spends most of the day nursing anyway) and worked out an extra time to pump when HRH is home and can take care of her while I do. I saw our new pediatrician on Monday (whom we love, and who will also be my new GP, hurrah) who was equally horrified at the nurse’s suggestion and commended me for ignoring it, saying that if we switched to formula we’d be jeopardising an already shaky breastfeeding situation. She understood right away that it wasn’t my milk supply that was an issue, it was the fact that if the baby is nursing most of the time, I don’t have the opportunity to pump. She’s fine with the slow weight gain (there is weight gain, after all; it’s not like it has stopped or has become weight loss), but she’s asked to see Owlet every two weeks instead of the usual four to keep track of it. Her head circumference and overall length have increased, so there’s definitely growing happening. I have another weigh-in at the CLSC this afternoon, and I’m kind of dreading it. I hope I get one of the two other nurses I’ve dealt with and like very much.

I dislike sleepers because of all the snaps, which are a pain when changing a diaper, so Owlet wears tiny leggings and t-shirts or tops most of the time. Today I put the cardigan I knit on her over her sleeveless shirt for the walk to the boy’s bus stop, and it fits!

It’s a bit short, but I knit it that way thinking of how crumpled newborns are, and I seem to remember mentioning that I was considering crocheting trim on the bottom anyway; that will add length. Or I may knit a flared open skirt-type thing to stitch onto it, making it more like a swing coat. I’d forgotten how soft the yarn is.

The ring sling my mum bought us while she was here is a boon. I use it around the house when I need to get stuff done and can’t sit with her in my arms. I also use it on the walk to the boy’s bus stop, and it’s brilliant. I especially appreciated it yesterday, because the boy’s bus home was an hour late getting to the school to pick them up (traffic, we hate you), so we were standing in the sun for a long time. I covered her head with the long tail of the sling, and even nursed her for half an hour while waiting.

She likes looking at vertical lines, and keeps an eye on the posts of the bed headboard, and the lines of the wall board, too. She likes looking at the sun patterns on the windows, and at the window frames. She’s so much more engaged now, sitting up propped against someone and looking around, examining people’s faces and making all sorts of interesting noises. She likes sitting in her swing at supper time; we pull it up to the table so she’s sitting with us while we eat. Sleep at night is going well, too; she usually does two three-hour stretches and goes back to sleep easily after nursing. (Now that I’ve said that publicly, watch it blow up.) Daytime sleeps are getting slightly better, although anything would be better than Not Sleeping At All, which is what was going on before.

Sparky is in love with her, and cuddles her whatever chance he gets. He is a very proud big brother:

I came into the room the other day to find her on his lap… she’d been fussing, and he’d managed to lift her out of her Moses basket then sit down with her. I’m glad I didn’t see it; it probably would have given me a heart attack. As it is, we had a talk about only doing it under supervision, and once she’s less squirmy.

While Waiting

Life goes on, of course, and I’m trying to keep busy, which is a challenge when you’re exhausted. We’ve started watching the Read or Die TV series with Marc after rewatching the OVA, which is fun. In the attic, HRH and his dad have finished everything but the drywalling and laying the laminate floor, although we are still waiting on an electrician. The boy and I went up into the attic during the terrific thunderstorm we had Monday afternoon and delighted in hearing the rain pound the roof about three feet above our heads.

I sat down yesterday to gather all the info I needed for the QPIP application for maternity benefits for self-employed workers, and discovered that I hadn’t made the minimum income last year required to qualify for the program. This was really, really annoying. The programme didn’t exist for self-employed workers the last time I had a baby, so this was going to be a nice bonus, but now I can’t take advantage of it. Equally annoying in a different way is the fact that HRH can’t take paternity leave. Or rather, he could, but there are a couple of major obstacles. First, it would require him taking the weeks immediately before plus the first week of school off again, which did not go over well last year when we moved the week before school started; and it would also mean training someone else to do his job while he’s gone because the technician is essential personnel at this time of year. This is more trouble than it’s worth and very risky to do besides, because then they may not take him back but put him somewhere else instead (his permanency guarantees him *a* job, not necessarily the job he’s got at the moment if he goes on leave of whatever kind). And second, taking paternity leave means bringing home only 75% of his salary, which we cannot survive on if I’m not working, which I can’t because hello, I’ll be taking care of a baby. If he chose to take it he’d only get 3 weeks at 75% pay, or he could do 5 weeks at 70% but that would be even more financially suicidal for us.

It just sucks on so many levels. If it were any other time of year he could take, say, a week apart from his five days of compassionate leave (that’s at full pay, whew), and we might get by. If we’d had the baby last year, there wouldn’t be an issue because I made twice as much in 2009, which puts me well over the minimum. I’m cranky about it because the money would have been nice, as I can’t really take on freelance work again for at least two or three months when things have settled down to a point where I can start shoehorning a productive hour at the computer in here and there, which means the cheques won’t start arriving till the end of the year.

The good thing that came of this annoyance is that I was angry enough to pull out my cello for the first time in a month, physical awkwardness be damned, and I played the Prelude to the Bach G major solo cello suite the best I’d ever played it. Owlet was all “Whoa whoa whoa, what is this, no no, LOUD” so I had to stop after playing it twice and then noodling experimentally through more of the first two suites. But it made me feel fantastic. I haven’t played it in well over a year, so to just sit down and pull it off made me really appreciate all the hard work I’ve been putting in at lessons and orchestra. Also, it served to remind me that callouses fade when you don’t use them. Ow, my poor left hand fingers.

I’ve been slowly getting through A Dance With Dragons and I’m still not sure where I stand on it. There’s so much going on in the grand scheme of things that nothing feels like it’s moving, although that can often happen in a middle book of a series. People keep leaving Westeros so more and more of the action is taking place elsewhere, and the reader has to keep learning about new cultures. It’s all moving the story in a way, but it’s doing it slowly enough that it doesn’t feel as rewarding as it used to. I bought my first eBook, too, which is actually a Laurie R. King novella only available in electronic format, and I am saving that to read in hospital. No, I lie; that’s my second purchased eBook. I bought, read, and enjoyed Cate Polacek’s Tempus House in May (aha, I knew I missed something in my May booklist! eBooks are going to be harder to keep track of, I suspect, because I can’t pile them on my desk as I finish them).

I pulled out a braid of Louet Karaoke fibre (half wool, half soysilk) in the Parrotfish colourway on Saturday (more pale greens and purples, with touches of gold and blue) and finished spinning it today. I’m chain-plying it to preserve the colour changes and suspect I may use it to knit an Oriental Lily dress for Owlet, should she ever decide to make an appearance. The soysilk was finicky to draft, though, and made for an overall weird chunky , sticky drafting experience. Curiously, I had similar issues when drafting silk pencil roving from Ozark, so I had an idea of how to deal with it (hold it just less than a staple length apart and snap it between the hands); it just made drafting the blend tricky, because the soysilk would slide past the wool, muddling the colour changes a bit. I’d have preferred sharper colour changes, so if I ever use this fibre again I’ll split it by colour and spin from the fold or something.

I’ve knit three more inches of the back of the lace cardigan. It looks just like it did in the last post, only longer. Knitting lace to length is somewhat annoying, because you really have to pin it out to measure where it’s at in order to have a proper idea of what its actual length is since lace looks like a ramen noodle disaster while in progress on the needles. And I picked up a skein of brownish orange embroidery floss to embroider beaks on our mobile owls, I ordered a yard and a half of owl motif fabric for the coverlet the boy wanted me to make for the baby, and a stamp to use to make thank you cards. I’d almost decided on some Cluny lace to finish the short ends of the woven blanket, but I re-examined the edges and I might be able to live with them as they are after all. In fact, all they may need is a row or two of single crochet to secure them a bit more. Which means I have to look up how to do that, because I have forgotten how after my one use of the technique to finish something eighteen months ago. Something to do tomorrow while waiting for the Owlet…

Owlet Update, 38 weeks

I am having a hard time shaking the belief that this is actually 39 weeks, since I’ve counted according to earlier data from the beginning. Yesterday’s prenatal was my 38-week appointment according to my doctor, and with her new numbers I’m technically at 38.5 weeks.

This was an uneventful OB appointment. She was totally not perturbed about the heavy bleeding on Monday that sent me to the hospital (what, were I and the nurse on duty the only ones who were worried? the gyno on call didn’t even check me out, only the nurse and a resident), isn’t concerned about the ongoing light bleeding, and says my membranes haven’t broken. There has been zero change from last week: 1 cm dilated, 50% effaced, contractions gaining in strength and pain but apparently doing nothing (except waking me up and making me walk a lot at night). Weight gain has ceased, which is normal, and for which I am deeply grateful, because pretty much nothing fits any more except dresses since the baby dropped two weeks ago. The internal exam hurt like blazes this time; my cervix is currently at a weird angle, apparently. Baby’s still chugging along all healthy and strong, and seems very happy where she is… which of course means I’m cranky, because I’m really, really past ready to get her out. I’m just going to start planning to have this baby in mid-August, which is the latest I’ll be able to go without being induced. That way I can’t be disappointed.

I’ve decided that trying to get as much crafty stuff done in the next couple of weeks will either (a) make Owlet arrive sooner rather than later, and/or (b) keep me busy and distracted till mid-August when they’ll evict her. I’ve sewed the owls for the mobile the boy designed (and they are so incredibly adorable! HRH wants me to keep making them for no other reason than to see more. Pictures to come when the mobile is assembled) so next on the list is the coverlet the boy decided she should have. I’ve narrowed the owl fabric down to two choices for that by browsing Etsy for two months; a backing can be chosen once that first decision is made.

I cast on for the long lace cardigan the other day in an effort to trick her out, too. Here’s the first three inches of the back, done in diagonal eyelet lace stitch with the BFL/silk blend I spun and used for the lace cap, on needles bigger than the weight of the yarn calls for so that the stitch is nice and open and airy:

I blindstitched and machine-stitched the ends of the green woven blanket I posted last week because I didn’t want a fringe (it would just get matted and felted) but I’m not sold on how they look, so I’ve decided to find some nice natural unbleached Cluny lace to sew over them, which means more fun Etsy browsing and mailbox joy to which to look forward.

And finally, I’m looking at free online patterns to sew wool soakers to cover the cloth diapers. It didn’t even occur to me that I could sew them. (Or rather, it did a while back, but the first patterns I found were for PUL covers and involved a lot of layers and stretching and elastic and Velcro tabs and I just don’t have to energy to deal with all that right now.) But durr, there are more ways to make things with fabric than knitting and weaving, as sewing the tiny owls for the mobile reminded me. I can use polar fleece, or I can hit the thrift stores and look for real wool sweaters to felt slightly and then cut pattern pieces out. I’ve also been browsing free patterns for making tiny dresses, because I’m finding such glorious Japanese printed fabrics on Etsy during my hunt for owl fabric for the coverlet.

The boy has a playdate this afternoon, the second day in a row with his best friend. I’d offered to have them over here today after her mum took them out to play in the local pool yesterday so I could go to my doctor, but she said that she’d have them over to her place again this afternoon to give me a whole afternoon at home to myself, something I haven’t had all summer, bless her. HRH is back at work as of yesterday, and while I deeply appreciate all the work he and his dad have put in on the attic (it’s 90% done!), it has been increasingly stressful dealing with so many people in my house at once for four weeks straight when I am accustomed to having lots of mental and emotional space to myself. I find that lately I’ve been needing even more space as this pregnancy nears its end, which is perfectly normal, and the social pressure of dealing with people on a daily basis has not been helping my ability to find a still space inside myself with which to deal with the stress and emotions attached to the last couple of weeks of pregnancy, especially one that has gone past what the medical community predicted would be the end based on past evidence. It doesn’t help that I’m sleeping horribly because I’m in a lot of pain, and can’t nap successfully when there were so many people around. (You would think I’d be used to sleeping horribly due to pain, but this is different from fibro. I know how to handle that kind of sleep/non-sleep. The only cure for this is to have the darn baby, and she’s not cooperating.)

A lot of things will be easier once we have the baby, and I keep telling myself that. Two weeks, max. It’s just that I’m working through so many tangled emotions about the whole going to full term (and possibly even past the EDD) after being primed to expect another early baby thing that two weeks feels like forever, especially when yesterday’s appointment showed zero change from the previous week. The empty baby bed next to ours is starting to be depressing instead of exciting.

Last week I bought the Owlet a party sundress for Ada’s birthday, and if she isn’t out to wear it and attend, I will be very, very sad indeed.

Owlet Update, 37 weeks

For those greedy for precise info: Yesterday’s prenatal revealed that I am 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced, and my OB said that the baby’s head was right there against the cervix, ready to go (I could have told her that; she lowered right after the last appointment two weeks ago and has been headbutting the cervix with great verve ever since). “Votre accouchement prendra place comme une charme,” my OB said with great delight. I swear, she’s more excited about how this is going than I am. I’m finally at the one prenatal appointment a week till the end point, so we’ll see where we are next week. Of course, we all know that dilation and effacement aren’t reliable signposts and that things can mysteriously reverse themselves, but physically I was already feeling Stuff Happen, so it’s nice to hear her confirm my suspicions.

For everyone else: Hey, I’m going to have a baby in a couple of weeks. That’s about all we know, because while there are certain signs that a baby’s body and a gestating mother’s body are headed in the right direction for birthing, no one really knows what triggers labour to happen whenever it does, though there are lots of theories. Also, hey, did you know that an estimated due date isn’t anything more than a guess based on a couple of charts put together by some doctor decades ago? A precise science this is not. A baby is considered On Time if it’s born two weeks before or after the EDD (why yes, that does mean a four-week spread, and yes, that’s kind of stressful if you’re trying to plan anything). This is why we’ve been telling people a rough time period instead of an actual date when they ask. And really, with all the adjustments back and forth being made to my EDD for various reasons, I’m just as glad we went that route, because otherwise people would be terribly confused by this point.

The renos upstairs proceed apace. HRH goes back to work next Wednesday, and while he’d like to be further along in the attic conversion, that would be logistically impossible. He’s done an incredible amount in the month he’s had, and his dad has been right there with him. The roof insulation is pretty much done, the wiring is all there just waiting for an electrician to check and connect it (waiting for replies from electricians = annoying), and HRH even took a day to run a duct up from the basement so that there would be air conditioning up there. That had to be done, really, because otherwise it was a sauna and the environment was unworkable. Not that the a/c actually makes the room cool, what with humidex temperatures of 48 C this week and working directly under a dark roof being baked by the sun, but it does make it somewhat more bearable. Plasterboard can be screwed to the wall framing at night after work once the wiring is approved and connected (c’mon, electricians!) and then it’s mudding and painting, and then it’s essentially done. If we can swing it and the sales are still on, HRH wants to put a floating laminate floor in instead of pouring three coats of paint on the plywood floor, too.

We have a car seat that fits our vehicle now (that was one of those Kind Of Important Things we had to handle quickly a week or so ago when we discovered that the incredibly awesome luxury car seat we borrowed from Miranda was too big to fit our car for safe and regular use), and we got the lightweight Snap n’Go stroller frame we wanted, too (we borrowed one six years ago and they’re brilliant; they’re much lighter and smaller than a true stroller, and you just snap the car seat into it). Best thing is we got them both on excellent sale, and they’re the only new items we’ve had to buy for this baby. And the resale value on the stroller frame is awesomely high, which means we’ll be able to recoup almost all of what we paid for it, tra la la.

More handmade show and tell!

Cate knit this absolutely fantastic Tweed baby blanket for the Owlet:

I forgot to post photos of the lace baby cap I knit (my first real lace project!). It needs a proper ribbon, as this is a temporary braid of yarn:

And here is the blanket I wove last weekend (which obviously did not work to trick the Owlet out). I love how the thick and thin single-ply yarn creates the texture and visual interest here with just a plain weave:

I think that’s it for now.

Recent Fibre Arts Roundup

Over May and June, I spun about 6 oz of beautiful BFL/silk blend that I’d been hoarding for over a year. It’s a Louet blend, and I ordered it one day at my LYS when the owner was scrolling through the listings on the wholesale website. I’d intended to order the Merino/silk, but she said, “Ooh, they’re coming out with a BFL/silk blend in a couple of months!” so I preordered that, then tucked it into my stash when it arrived and just loved the fact that I owned it. When I decided that I wanted to knit a lace cap for this baby (I swear, I do not know who I am any more) I knew exactly what I wanted to spin for it: the BFL/silk. Because really, it’s such a lovely fibre that chances are good I’d never use it for anything else because it would get worn out or damaged or whatever.

Anyway, it was a dream to spin. I started out with 2oz and got about 300 yards of laceweight two-ply, with which I am very impressed as I knit with it. I had angst while swatching before I spun this yarn, but actually casting on and doing the real thing has taught me a lot about how I knit and the kind of mistakes that I make. And also that using a nicer quality yarn makes the whole thing a lot more enjoyable.

Anyway, I have managed to complete two full repeats of the lace pattern to date:

I will admit that I unknit and reknit every row because I made at least one mistake each time, but I am very proud of what I’ve got so far. Three more repeats and I will have the top/sides of the cap; then a solid back is knitted and sewn on. I am resisting knitting it, though, because it’s a bit of a chore, and I don’t have the energy to focus on the pattern. It takes me about ninety minutes to do a full six-row repeat, including ripping back and reknitting, and with the amount of editing work I’ve been doing lately that’s been glomping what energy I do have, and the fact that there are two people home 24/7 who usually are not, the knitting is kind of low on the list of priorities. It’s hard to devote ninety minutes to something that needs absolute quiet and concentration when there are people tromping through your house doing renos and a small child asking you to fix things, fetch things down from shelves, make snacks, or read things.

I enjoyed spinning the fibre for this so much that I decided having a long lacy coat thing to match the cap would be nice, so I tracked down a basic diagonal eyelet lace stitch and am vaguely planning doing a basic long sweater with bigger needles than the BFL/silk calls for to make the lacework even more open, and sewing short pretty ribbons at the chest to fasten it. This was a thinly veiled excuse for spinning another 3ish oz of the BFL/silk blend, which I did with great enjoyment. The diagonal eyelet pattern is so very basic enough that I could do it while in the hospital if necessary (it’s certainly a hell of a lot less complicated than the lace pattern for the cap), and doing a back panel, two sleeves, and two front panels would be easy-peasy. But I mean, really? A long open lace light coat/ sweater thing? Totally impractical. It would be worn maybe once. Pregnancy is messing with my brain, I tell you. Well, at least I loved spinning it.

Other knitty stuff:

My Chaussons mignons:

My Page 81 booties, which, as you can see, were knitted at two different tensions, which created two different gauges, which in turn yielded two different sized booties. The solution to this is to knit a third bootie, which will either match the newborn sized one, or the 3-6 months sized one:

And now, other people’s knitty stuff!

Ceri knit the Owlet a lovely newborn hat from Manos silk blend, in my favourite Wildflowers colourway, and a pair of Canadian flag socks!

Jan knit a cardi, hat, and shoelet set in a lovely pale icy green for the Owlet. Those shoelets are also knit from the Chaussons mignons pattern, and are much tidier than mine:

I think that’s it.

I’ve gone back to considering weaving the Manos Clasica blanket again. It’s certainly more mindless than knitting, and once I’ve finished my second set of galley proofs early this week, I could warp the loom.

Weekend Roundup: Canada Day Edition

The concert was just lovely this year. And I am still pregnant, so I have broken the Die Fledermaus overture curse (I didn’t get to play it last time we prepared it because the boy arrived early!). A slightly higher chair meant that suddenly my endpin-at-full-extension no longer held the cello at the proper angle to skim the bump, so I had to switch to playing sidesaddle, which I hadn’t prepared… but it all worked, even though I looked like a poster child for How To Not Play The Cello:

And now I get to put the cello away for a month or so, unless I feel like taking it out and noodling with it for a bit. My teacher suggested using a block for my endpin, which would lift it up a bit more.

The orchestra got together to give me a card with best wishes and a little cup, bowl, and bib set for the baby, which was terribly sweet, and they’ve asked for pictures and news as soon as we have it. I was told I was so darn cute that night by three different musicians. ‘Cute’ is not a word I’d use to describe a pregnant cellist, but hey, whatever works for them. I was also informed that I was a trouper. I take my commitments seriously, so bowing out mid-season just wasn’t an option for me; on one hand, I was in it for the season… and on the other hand, I’m just selfish, and I loved the music and didn’t want to give orchestra up, as it was the one thing that got me out of the house. The concert itself wasn’t a problem so much as the occasional rehearsal evening where I looked at the time and my energy levels and my physical state and grumbled all the way through my forty-five minute drive to our rehearsal location. But actually rehearsing always made it worth it. Some people were surprised that I intend to be back in September as well, but others weren’t; they understand that getting out one night a week when you have a new baby is good for the sanity.

And our good deed of the night was finding someone’s iPhone after the fireworks, and they came to pick it up the next morning (though we offered to drive it back on our errands today; it’s a 45-minute drive, after all) and they brought chocolates as a thank you!

It seems to be a sudden FAQ, so no, I have no birthday plans this year due to a certain young lady who could arrive any time. We knew I’d be either exhausted and in the last days of pregnancy, or exhausted because I had a newborn, so deliberately haven’t planned anything. (On the other hand, a great way to ensure she’d be born around that time would be to plan something that we’d then have to cancel dramatically at the last moment…) Also, three separate important people have pointed out that they are out of town in mid-July when the Owlet could very well make her debut, which either means that yes, she’ll be born when no one is around, or that she’ll stubbornly hang on till the beginning of August. We shall see.

I have had a sudden influx of handmade gifts! Ceri knitted a lovely newborn hat out of Manos silk blend in my favourite Wildflower colourway, and a pair of Canadian flag baby socks that I’d seen ages ago and loved. And Jan gave me a hat-cardi-shoelet set in a lovely cool pale green yarn that she’d not only kitted, but entered in the Maxville Fair and won second prize for a 2- or 3-piece baby set! (Her Chausson Mignons are much more mignon than mine. Wait, you haven’t seen mine yet, because I still haven’t written a knitting/spinning roundup. Sigh. Take my word for it.) I should assemble everything and photograph it so you can be jealous, and add it to the as-yet-mythical knitting/spinning summary.

Today and tomorrow are devoted to proofing the galleys of the bird book (FULL COLOUR, people! It’s gorgeous!). Wednesday is a doctor’s appointment for me, and one for the boy, and then next Monday I proof the companion bird journal, and then I am Officially Off. I turned down a copyediting gig that was due July 17, because I couldn’t guarantee that I could do it and get it back on time what with the exhaustion that hits during final couple of weeks (or the baby that might land).