vrya's Journal

3:41pm: First baby sweater done!



about 50g fingering weight wool, knit free-style from the neck down, with crochet trim. Colored flowers were dyed with kool-aid in the microwave. Started sometime in November, and completed January 1st. Sized about six months. More details and pics here.

In summary: teeny tiny sweaters, so quick & fun to make! I can only imagine how long it would have taken me to make a similar sweater for myself in fingering weight yarn. Next up, worsted weight! This new one should take considerably less than the 6-8 weeks this first one did.

12:53pm: tiny red overalls

These sat around half done (oops, underestimated the length the straps would need to be!) for at least a couple of weeks, but finally, I have conquered! No pattern, just a hope and a prayer and snip, snip, snip! Which is why they're not the most perfect thing I've ever sewn, but still pretty cute I think. John thinks they need an "M" on the front. Never having been a gamer, that one took me a while to figure out...

10:14am: A Very Special Plug-in-appliance Christmas
2 Sundays ago: mm, I smell gas. So much for Christmas baking! Not to mention my dinner plans...

Friday: Repair guy: stove busted, needs a part to fix. Might be in stock... will let you know.

Monday: Landlord says: Repair place told me they have to order the part to fix the stove, 4-5 business days, then arrange install date.

Tuesday Morning: I order a shiny new toaster oven on amazon.

Tuesday Afternoon: Repair place calls: so, didja want that repair? Me: um, yeah. Duh! Repair Place: our records say the part's in, is Monday okay for installation?

And so, as of this morning, Christmas Eve, the toaster oven has shipped. Will it get here Friday, in time to temporarily replace the oven as intended? Will the repair actually happen Monday? Or will it be 2009? Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, it's hotdogs and crockpot chili and microwaved oven fries for Christmas eve dinner. For Christmas dinner, I have some salmon I can pan-fry on the single-electric-burner I bought this weekend, but I don't know, maybe it would be funnier/funner to order Chinese instead? And Tivo/Netflix a Christmas Story? Will decide later...

11:16am: Non-baby related post

And here we have my latest culinary improvisation. Our range/oven has been out of commission for almost a week now, so it's been all slow-cooker and other plug in appliance cooking all week, and I *really* wanted to make some gingerbread cookies, so I decided to try it in the wafflemaker. Not too bad, taste wise, though of course they look all wrong.

Here's hoping the part for the oven is in stock, in which case it'll be fixed Monday. Otherwise, looks like it's Chinese Delivery for Christmas Dinner! Which might have to happen anyway, as the alley behind our building where our car is parked is in deep deep snow, and I couldn't get the car out this morning to go grocery shopping. If it doesn't get plowed soon, we may be eating some very odd things from the depths of the pantry come Christmas...

Meanwhile, I think I'm going to have to try cross-posting from flickr to LJ from now on if I ever hope to post to LJ regularly again. I have high hopes of getting a baby update soon, but something (usually the baby!) always derails my plans...

9:50am: Isabel slept 5 1/2 hrs straight last night! Longest stretch ever... I even woke up a half hour before she did, quite probably because my B cup runneth over. Or more accurately, my B cup becometh uncomfortably full and leaky. tmi? But hey, not complaining, because 5 HOURS OF SLEEP! woot! The night before, she managed 4 hrs. Two data point is a trend, right? right? *runs off to count chickens before they're hatched*

Anyway, since I am now the proud owner of a very nifty little flip video recorder, I leave you with the following video. Please ignore the ludicrous babyspeak. I'm told it's not humanly possible to talk to a baby in a normal voice...

11:01am: So, Isabel is 5 weeks old, and I haven’t even posted an abbreviated birth story yet. That should give you some indication of what kind of month it’s been!

( and away we go... )

4:29pm: Life post-partum, in bullets

• In the wee hours of Sunday morning, I dreamed that the Devil offered to make Isabel sleep longer so I could finally get some sleep myself. I was out of bed trying to rouse a sleeping baby to nurse, desperate to reject the offer and avoid whatever the inevitable Terrible Price might be, before enough wakefulness kicked in to cause me to reconsider. The really weird part is that ever since, she's been giving me 3 hour-and-a-half to two-and-a-half hour stretches overnight, whereas before it was never more than half an hour. I feel almost human. Coincidence? My milk did after all finally come in that morning. Or did I really make that deal?
  
• Body Update: Belly, still squishy, but now a stone's throw from normal, and I don't think anyone would guess looking at me that I had a baby 10 days ago. I'm still 10lbs up from pre-preg weight, but managed to squeeze into my favorite jeans today. My nipples were far more painful than the stitches for my second degree tear, but both are doing much better these last few days. Barely noticeable. My ankles are back, after having gone MIA sometime during my hospital stay. And we have a new visitor: cleavage! omg, I think I might actually be a B! *That's* gonna take some getting used to... might as well enjoy the new profile while it lasts!
  
• I am now the owner of a camera-shaped paper-weight. My beloved Canon s3, may she rest in peace, must have been overwhelmed with despair at her inability to fully capture the spectacular cuteness of my new daughter and promptly up and died yesterday after 2 years loyal service. I went through all the standard stages of grief, and then ordered a Flip Ultra, which should arrive tomorrow. Will make due with my film SLR and old 2 megapixel point-n-shoot for a while, but decent video capture was not negotiable!
  
• John is home today from work, but not on paternity leave. He has the flu! Or something else that comes with fever and the general miserableness. Isabel had a fever when she was born, and the doctor thought she caught something from me, even though I didn't have any symptoms or positive test results, so we both went on antibiotics. All we can do is wait and hope we won't either of us come down with it, and of course that he feels better soon. There's a lot of important baby enjoying to do!
  
• Need I mention how spectacularly charming Isabel is? I've never been around a newborn before, so I guess I can't really say whether she cries or fusses or otherwise inconveniences us more or less than average, but we are both mightily smitten with our new little houseguest, however demanding she may at times be. We were both prepared for a wrinkly little alien baby who would spend most of her time screaming and producing Substances of Toxic Grossness, karma for the difficult infants we both were, and instead, we got a cherubic little angel. Of course, there may still be colic and who knows what else in store for us, but so far, we've been managing better than expected. Yay!
  
• Thanks for all the kind comments to my announcement post! Very much appreciated, even if I don't have time to respond individually. Because it's time! Time for the next feeding! Right now! Or else!
  

7:06pm: Baby!

NOTICE OF EVICTION

At 6:38 am on Tuesday October 14th, 2008, Tenant Isabel Grace was evicted from her place of residence (The Uterus) after having violated the terms of her 9-month lease by exceeding the limits on weight (7lbs 2oz) and height (20 inches) specified in the terms of residence. Eviction was forceable (pitocin!) but the former Residence and the newly ousted Tenant are both recovering nicely...

Payment of unpaid back-rent is pending, but the Uterus Owner/Landlord is willing to accept alternate tender -- including snuggles, cooperative napping behavior and patient sitting for an as yet undetermined but large number of photographs -- in lieu of cash or check.

(More to come when I catch up on some zzzs. Last night, first home from hospital, was rather brutal in that regard, but the day went well, so fingers crossed that she's figured out that 3 or 4 fifteen minute stretches of sleep per night is not exactly what I had in mind... )

9:14am:

So, yeah, obviously declaring in how surprisingly great you feel during your last trimester *can* attract the ire of the gods. Because after making it through 36 weeks plus at least several months before that (including a particularly nasty flu season) with nary a sniffle, I came down with a cold Friday night.

Thankfully it was really minor as colds go. Scratchy throat, sniffles & a little mental fog. I haven't taken so much as a tylanol since I got pregnant, so I was thankful that I was able to soldier through this without even being tempted to go beyond the honey/salt-water-gargle/prop-yourself-up methods of dealing with my symptoms. Felt a little better by Sunday morning, a lot better by Monday, and today I would consider myself recovered. Though it's a little hard to separate the mental fog/congestion that comes with late-term pregnancy from what comes with a cold... That double whammy on Saturday had my brain power seriously diminished. I handed my transit card to the cashier at the grocery store rather than the store card, and almost walked away from the table at the restaurant without my delicious doggy bag of left-overs, having had it handed to me not 30 seconds previously. And wow, did you know that coughing/sneezing/blowing-your-nose is like major ab work when you have to move around 20 pounds of baby & baby support systems with each heave? Man. But, like I said, better now. And I did get a few things done regardless.

All the pieces were cut free-hand without any previous experimentation, so I'm not quite sure I got the proportions as good as they could be (arms maybe a bit big? head a bit small?) but hey, it's definitely a bunny. And now that I've got the leg on the right way (at first I accidently sewed it with the toe pointing down. oops) it doesn't look half bad for a first attempt.

I don't hate the cover this chair came with, but it occurred to me that it would be nice to have a solid color rather than a distracting pattern right by the baby's head when taking photos, so I got some fleece and made a new cover. It doesn't replace the existing one, just goes over it, with slits for the original strapping mechanisms to exit through. There, much better. I made some quick matching toys to replace the 2 detachable ones, but will probably make some better ones later on. John points out that the overall color scheme has gone from "baby in the jungle" to "baby at a rave". Hmm, do babies like black lights?

1:57pm: There seems to be a gap in the pregnacy side-effect warning system. Long before you even start to show, you'll know all about all the many potential horrors that might possibly almost certainly will afflict you. But there's not a lot of talk about Can'tKeepAShirtCleanIstis. I'm here to tell you that it is a very real threat. Nothing like a suddenly protruding belly to catch every toothpaste drip, crumb and spill. But this is getting ridiculous. Today, it's Mystery Color Stripping:



I swear I have not been around anything even remotely bleach-like today. But whatever it was has soaked through not only this (old) t-shirt, but right through to the (new) extra long tanktop I was wearing underneath for belly coverage. Sigh. And now I'm gonna spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what could possibly have savaged this poor innocent t-shirt like this...

7:35pm: shameless commerce
17k words, and hopefully most of them are spelled correctly with good grammar and typography. And if not, I don't want to hear about it now! Yes, that's right, it may have taken me a year -- a year punctuated with long months where I couldn't bear to pick it up and read it yet again looking for things to fix -- but finally, I'm ready to call it done:



66 pages of full color photoshop instruction goodness, based on my old fanart tutorial. But with all new (non-fandom) illustrations and lots of additional tips and tricks. There's a very shiny print version that looks and feels just like a real official book, and also a downloadable pdf version. I like to call it my "mama needs a new dSLR" project, though I suspect my odds of raking in enough profit to reach that goal are pretty low. Still, a girl can dream! And hey, the most important thing is that at long last, it's DONE. Which means I never have to read it again. Which is key, because I might notice something that needed to be fixed -- I've been saving versions with the overly optimistic word "final" in the file name for, oh, about 4 months now -- and then my head would quite probably explode. And nobody wants that!

So, yes. Am done. Fly, be free, little photoshop book!

9:07am: my first hair donation

Allow me to hyperventillate for a minute. Last winter I heard that Pantene was accepting 8" hair donations, and since I usually cut 4" at a time, I figure, what the heck, I can wait a few more months for a good cause. And today was the day. It really looked like it would still be pretty long after I made the cut, but man. I haven't had hair this short since I was a toddler, and the sudden contrast from what it has been this last year is rather a shock to my delicate system. The belly growth at least has been gradual! I think it ended up being more like 11-12" with the margin of error I left and the extra bit of trimming. But already I don't hate it (despite the Oh God, What Have I Done? moment when I first saw) and I'm sure I'll get used to it soon, and at anyrate, it's not like it doesn't grow back. Still. omg! SO SHORT! e.t.a.: for me! I recognize that normal people do not view this length as short ;-)

5:22pm: I had found these helpful childcare tips a few months ago, but today I discovered that there's more! Pregnancy tips! (even if you're not interested in either subject, you may still want to have a look.)

8:01pm: Evolution of a sewing pattern

Someone asked a question on flickr about the pattern for my latest dress, and it occurred to me that it might be interesting -- if you're interested in that sort of thing! -- to see how I got from point (A) a little top picked up some years ago, probably at JC Penny's, all the way to my latest effort. This is pretty typical process for me, and probably for a lot of people who work without commercial patterns; I find some element I like and that's easy to do, and then I just recyle it with slight modifications whenever I want to make something new.

Anyway, to sum up: We start in 2004 or 2005 with a store bought top. Then in the spring of 2005, I needed a dress for my brother's OCS grad ceremony, so I made a tissue paper tracing of the main pieces, and lengthened the bottom into an hourglass style dress. Then the next year, I wanted a new top, so I dug out the pattern I'd made, but this time cut the new version much shorter to eliminate the skirt. And then finally, for the latest version, I made it even more dramatically shorter, with the bottom front piece (and a new band on the back) a contrasting color, and then tacked on your basic trapezoidal skirt in the same color as the top.

1:48pm: Maternity Dress No. 3

For those who have been following my maternity wadrobe expansion with rapt attention... here's number 3, done in record time.

This one went together exceedingly easily, as I had taken the pattern for the top from a purchased piece years ago, and just had to make it shorter and tack on the skirt. And I threw in a side view with strategic hand placement to illustrate that I am in fact 47% pregnant as of today. I can't believe I'm almost half way! I can still zip my lowrise jeans up, just barely. We'll see how much longer that lasts...

Anyway, made this dress a little bit shorter than the rest, and was thinking about tacking on a black ruffle at the bottom before hand to tie together with the black waist band, but the material weights weren't cooperating, and I decided it looked classier this way anyway (also: lazy), so we'll hang on to that idea. May well need it later, as I'm currently drawing a blank as to what to do with the two remaining lengths.

5:10pm: Experience with home security monitoring
After a break-in downstairs in our building last week, we're considering signing up with a 24-hr security monitoring service. Their equipment is already in the apartment, they'd just need to activate, and then we'd have to pay the monthly fee.

Anyone have any experiences with this kind of service? Worth the trouble? I'm just afraid that it'll be rather a pain to juggle turning it on and off all the time as we come and go, especially come October, and that someone who wanted to break in could easily bypass the little button devices that detect if doors have been opened. It's $25/month, so not terribly expensive, but if still more $ than I'd rather waste on something useless...

Thoughts?

10:35am: Convertible skirt/halter dress

Maternity dress number 2, done. Yes I know I don't look 3-days shy of 4 months pregnant in the center panel, but I swear I am, even if the angle of that particular photo is not doing much to back me up. Anyway, this dress is in 2 pieces, a cropped wrap-tie halter top and a skirt which can be either worn at the waist with another shirt or hiked up to the bustline and anchored in place with the halter ties. It's a pretty conveniently flexible arrangement, esp. since the weather is conspiring against my desire to wear open backed halter tops anytime soon...

The skirt is just 3 trapezoids sewn together with elastic at the top. Fabric is from denverfabrics.com, but I don't think they have this pattern anymore. The halter design was copied from one I made back in college, which was in turn copied out of some old 60s or 70s sewing book.



I remember looking at this design in a book back then and wondering how the heck it was supposed to work. One big hole for both arms? how does the top stay up? huh? But it's actually pretty simple once you get the hang of it. Hard shape to fit neatly into a rectangle though, at least if you cut it all in one piece, so you end up wasting a lot of fabric.

1:07pm: Reversible Dress

It was a whirlwind weekend of sewing, but I managed to finish my first maternity dress. The only thing I did differently than if I'd been doing a regular dress was to put all the gathers in the front rather than spreading them out around the entire bottom of the bodice. Had to stop and do a little head scratching from time to time to figure out how to make it completely reversible, but in the end I think it came out pretty well, and I'm feeling more optimistic and enthusiastic about tackling the other 4 pieces...

Fabric from Denver fabrics, here. All sewing by hand. Pattern started out with my basic halter procedure, as detailed a million years ago here, but I made it much shorter, lined it, added an elastic around the bottom edge and then attached the skirts there.

4:39pm:

Before I got pregnant, I'd been thinking about buying a bike this spring for tooling around the neighborhood. I used to bike around campus in college, and it was fun and handy.

I've changed my mind.

A few days ago, a *second* girl was killed at the intersection a quarter mile north of my apartment that I drive/walk through just about every trip I take around here. In fact, I'd just driven through it on my way home about an hour or so before the accident. Another girl was killed at that same intersection last September, a few months after we moved here.

I'm going to take that as a sign... sorry hypothetical future bike, maybe next town.

4:07pm: le sigh. I pay $7 to RMA my new not-working-so-good harddrive to newegg, and what does the Chicago USPS do? They deliver it to *me* in today's mail. I guess the font of my return address was a smidge bigger than newegg's, but still. It was in the upper left corner, and the newegg one right smack dab in the middle. Also, we are IN CHICAGO. And the RMA address is clearly NOT.

So, bets on whether the post office will re-mail it for me without charging me another $7? Not likely, methinks.

ETA: well, surprise, surprise, they took it back with no new charges -- now with stars all around the delivery address and a new return address label clearly marked "from". If it shows up on my doorstep again on Friday, immagonna be ticked...

5:49pm: And in the "guess I better get used to it" category, yesterday marks the first time a stranger decided to touch my belly upon learning I was pregnant. For some reason it seems extra weird given that I'm *barely* showing. You have to know me and my current physique pretty well to tell the difference between "ate a large lunch" and "15 weeks pregnant." I was not outraged or even upset, as she was just a friendly middle aged woman with really different personal bounderies than me and it was very brief. "Nonplussed" would be a good word, I guess. It just strikes me as such a weird impulse to have. I don't think it would even occur to me to ask if I could touch a close friend's pregnant belly, let alone do it unthinkingly...

7:37pm: Today I

• Opened the windows for the first time in 5-6 months
  
• Put ice in my water glass
  
• Left my apartment without taking any sort of sweater, coat, scarf, etc along with
  
• Sat comfortably on my balcony in the same clothes I was wearing inside
  
• Noticed a few brave daffodils and scanty forscythia blooms
  

Dare I hope that spring really has sprung? It seems like perfect timing; all the green things swelling and growing, just like me!

8:41am: As you are all by now no doubt heartily aware, I have many creative-type hobbies. So many in fact that I can't really engage in them all at the same time, but tend to cycle through. However, they are by and large the same -- or variants of -- the hobbies I've been playing with for most of my life. But three months ago, I began working round-the-clock on a totally new and very exciting creative hobby of life-changing proportions. The new secret hobby?

GESTATION!!!

That's right, folks. Using only the raw materials found in your typical local grocery store, I am in the process of creating a Brand New Human Being of As Yet Undetermined Gender! It is currently quite small, but I expect it to expand rather a lot eventually, given the judicious application of the aforementioned grocery store materials. Oh, yes, John did help a bit with the initial blueprints before construction actually began, it's true. But let me tell you, it's been quite the Herculean effort to shovel *this* much food into myself at such frequent intervals, not to mention all the hard work of napping, locating restrooms and resisting the urge to run out and purchase all the wee teeniest tiniest clothes I can find.

True to form, I expect this hobby to make way for a sudden all-consuming passion for photography right about the middle of October. You have been warned.

4:28pm: dormant bareroot strawberries

well, they're out of my fridge and in the growbags. Sad, sad little clumps of roots and wan droopy sprouting bits that they are. Still, just because success looks unlikly at this point, doesn't mean it couldn't happen, right? Forecast for tonight is for a low of 33ish; I'm considering bringing them in as I figure it might be even colder than that on an exposed balcony, but I haven't decided yet...

7:08pm: film
Last year, I dug out my film SLR for the first time in several years, bought a new lens for it, and took a roll of film while visiting with my new nephew. I sent it by mail to snapfish for developing. When I got the roll back, I was initially disappointed with the look of the grain, though after a while I decided it was an acceptable special effect sort of look.

Fast-forward to last week, when I decided I really needed to try and use another of the 4 rolls I had bought back then. I got those prints back today, from Target, and was pleasantly surprised by the absense of the pronounced grain that had struck me with the first batch. Same film, same camera, same lens. So I decided to take a second look at the negatives from the first roll.



Given the option, I always scan from the print, but looks like I should have had a closer look at the negatives here. Aside from the sad state of my scanner glass (really, I'll remember to clean it. any day now!) I was amazed at the difference between the two. And that grain on the left isn't some sort of jpeg artifact, or huge blow up, that's how it looks on the actual print.

So the moral of the story appears to be: boo snapfish! I don't recall ever being displeased with their digital prints (though these days I use walgreens for small orders I need fast, and winkflash for larger amounts) but I'm not sending them film again.

I may have to see what happens if I have Target make reprints from the snapfish negative...

In other hobbiest news, anyone ever gotten mail order bareroot strawberry plants before? Nights are supposed to freeze here for the next 2-3 days, so I'm hoping that the ones I got today (my first) are going to be okay in the fridge for a while before I plant them. Advice? I have to say they don't look like much of anything right now...