the first day of school

is always kind of a mixed day for me. while i'm glad to be leaving the house for a higher purpose than just mailing stuff, i miss my days being for myself. today is my first class of the spring semester, and being pregnant and stuff, it should be interesting how things go.

on the productive side, i've been kind of a baby knits nut lately. this little pair of mary janes are my latest baby knit (ok, baby crochet). unfortunately, due to the pregnancy and such, my wrist is giving out to carpal tunnel (at least it hurts like crazy) so i'm probably going to slow down the knitting and crocheting a lot, which is a bummer as i just got this booklet called baby bootie boutique. i got the little mary jane pattern from there :) anyhow, enjoy, 'cause this will be the last of it!

A good cause! healthy boobs for everyone.

a friend of ours, ginny, is walking for the avon walk for breast cancer! won't you sponsor her?

the five hour baby sweater for my baby

so i've been going a little bit crazy with the baby knits! yes, i'll admit it... some say it's because i'm sentimental, but really i think it's the satisfaction of finishing something so fast and the fact that a lot of stuff only uses one skein of yarn, which is both economic and stash-busting. not that i don't love to make teeny tiny little things that will end up on my baby :) i just love the instant gratification of it all. so the latest thing i've made, since the hats, is this five hour baby sweater (i got the pattern here, although i revised it a little). it was supposed to take 5 hours, but i think it probably took me a little bit more than that. anyhow, now that it's done it's very satisfying and super cute! i love it. and i made it with some knitpicks yarn i had leftover from my mom's hat & gloves -- which was supposed to be a clapotis-- i made about a year ago for her birthday.

prolific? or just inspired?

so after the disappointment with my flore hat, i decided to make a hat that the baby could wear right away after she's born. i have this funny daydream where people are looking for her through the nursery's glass and she's wearing a funny little hat that makes her easily identifiable. so i made her a little fruit hat with the leftover yarn from the flore hat. it's really teeny tiny! it fits a little head from 13 inches to 16 inches so basically a very newborn baby.

i've also made a couple of other things lately. the second item is a 4 inch turtle i made for the one tiny thing swap, where you put a lot of effort into one little thing for your partner. my partner, peihan (who has a cool etsy store), likes toys but can't crochet so i made her this tiny turtle. it's super cute and since turtles are my favorite too, i'm gonna make myself one too.

last but not least, marco has been harassing me for months to make his friend tim a hat which i refused to make as i prefer to good-humoredly jingle the idea of a hat in front of tim. but finally i said ok, and i made him a crochet boy beanie from the happy hooker :) it came out pretty good :)

the flore was supposed to be for the baby

so when i found out i was having a little girl, the first knitted thing i thought about was this hat, flore, pattern by knitwhits. i've always wanted to make it but never had a reason. so the baby gave me a perfect reason, and i ordered the pattern and some yarn from knitpicks... i really wanted to make this perfect little hat for a baby girl.
unfortunately, i have no idea where i went wrong but this hat is pretty big (which is weird 'cause i had the right gauge). so big that it fit my glass head which is adult sized. :( i'm pretty disappointed 'cause i really wanted that infant size to be, well, INFANT SIZE. the hat is also a bit floppier than i thought it would be but i guess it's still pretty cute. problem is, it fits me!

on a happier note, yesterday i felt my baby move! it was weird, kinda like my stomach was making waves and something was swishing back and forth. i mean, i guess it could've been some sort of stomach function but others keep telling me that it was the baby so i guess that's what i'm saying now too :)

upcycleBB entry for etsy

so etsy is having a contest that has you make stuff out of stuff that would normally be discarded or thrown away. i chose the noble penny (since i already had ideas for a big penny necklace before this contest, the contest gave me an excuse to take the time to make it). it was also one of my goals for winter break to actually get an entry into this contest. i made it, but just barely with a few minutes to spare! let me know what you think!
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Think a penny wouldn't get thrown away?

[Pennies] get thrown away to such an extent that the Mint made 8 billion new ones last year--far more than any other coin--at a cost of roughly $100 million...
--Time Magazine 7/10/2006

Nearly a third of Americans want to eliminate the penny entirely. Scores of articles and editorials have endorsed the idea, and at least one US congressman has tried twice to make it happen.
--The Phoenix 10/13/2006

Forty-seven percent of 18- to 34-year-olds admit that they've thrown away a penny at least once in their lives.
--American Demographics 1/1/2002

RIP Little Nicky

i feel super bad 'cause we had to put my grandfather's dog, nicky, to sleep today. he's been having seizures and problems in the last week and recent x-rays have revealed he has several fused vertabrae which is incredibly painful. he's kind of on the older side for such a HUGE dog (he was around six feet on his hind legs) so we thought it was best that he didn't suffer anymore. poor guy. he was a sweet dog, pretty doofy but really a good boy. the saddest part is we (marco and i) were ready to take him off my grandfather's hands because he's a big guy that needed more strength and training than my grandfather could provide. so he wasn't just grandpa's dog, but he was our dog too. marco had just taught him to sit and we were working on lying down. rip little nicky, hope everything works out in doggy heaven.

the countdown

tee-hee! i found a ticker to countdown my due date!

a belly and a blankie (oh and a hat)

good lord, i'm a beach ball. i am indeed carrying a lot in the front instead of all over, just like the old wives' tale. people tell me it's pretty hard to tell i'm pregnant from the back. oh well, you see for yourself (my belly at 18 weeks):


also, i've made my little girl a stroller blankie and matching hat, crotcheted from a pattern from the Happy Hooker. i love it as i think it will match the stroller we've picked out! :) and it has a little hole in the front for the seatbelt to go through. i finished it during the america's next top model mega-marathon :) yay i knew watching ANTM would work to my advantage for something! here's the blankie & hat:

the big news

so, it's official.

it's a girl :)

well, the doctor is 95% sure it's a girl. we are overjoyed that she is currently growing at the correct rate and weighs 1/2 lb already! that means it would cost something like $4.05 to mail her (i keep thinking of it in terms of mailing stuff because they kept telling me her weight in ounces and i keep sending stuff out for my etsy store in ounces).

i've been purposely hoarding this info because i wanted to tell everyone myself but since i've told my grandmother (otherwise known as the Western Satellite), everyone i know in person already knows. but my friends who read my blog don't! so there you go.

waiting for my next ultrasound

so we're supposed to find out squirmy's sex this coming wednesday. a lot of people have said, hey why don't you keep it a surprise? well, because i believe that pushing something the size of a watermelon through a hole the size of a lemon is surprise enough. anyhow, i've been checking out all these old wives' tales to play-guess at squirmy's gender. well, so far, they all say it's a girl, but i still don't know (???). i don't want to get my hopes up either way!

so, in the desperation to give myself something else to do until then, i've adopted another pet. i'm silly, it's a virtual turtle but it makes me happy, dammit.