Oh, boo, or, Rain

Quite in keeping with the season, but still rather drab and grey. I actually quite like rainy days...at home, with a cup of something hot and my puppy and some knitting. Instead, I am in my office, pretending to work, chilly because the a/c is too cold, fighting the urge to sleep. How many weeks left before I get to stop coming in? I think about three (just checked my calendar in Outlook: maybe two!!) and not a moment too soon.

Completely unrelatedly: how is it that I keep hearing about pets getting into mouse and rat poison? Not bait, laid out to get the little critters, but boxes of the stuff? We had to take Wembley to the doggie Urgent Care when she was just a baby: she'd jumped off The Man's lap and bonked her knee into the floor, and was refusing to walk a day later. Very worrisome, though she was absolutely fine, it turned out. Just a wuss. Anyway, while we were there, a family brought in their little dog who had eaten rat bane up at the cottage. And just today, I read about some dogs getting into mouse poison. I can't imagine keeping poison in my possession, period (but I'll grant you, I have never lived with a mouse or rat infestation, so I can't truly appreciate what that must be like) but I particularly cannot fathom keeping poison accessible to little animals who are not the intended victims. Maybe the ease with which such deadly chemicals can be purchased, and in highly secure containers like cardboard boxes (I always like to keep my deadly chemicals in the equivalent of a cereal box, don't you?) contributes to a general forgetting of just exactly what these chemicals actually do. It isn't pretty. And it's not for puppies.

Cotton baby, or, Tiny Fan

About a month ago, The Man and I were over at my Mum's for dinner and she told us she had something for us. She had knit our little Bean this tiny outfit! It's knit out of Bernat Cottontots, and so soft!! I've thought it felt awfully nice in the skein when I've seen it at Michael's, but wasn't sure what it would look like knitted up. Well, it's lovely knit up, and just as soft as it's seemed skeined up.

The Man is a huge - HUGE - Seahawks fan, so Mum embroidered a logo on the cap, since he is adamant that our kids will be football fans, too. It isn't that he'll insist, just that they naturally will. Regardless, the jacket and bottoms are beautiful and so very soft.

I can't wait to see them on a little person.

Another one bites the dust, or, *sigh*

I never actually bought or knit anything from The Garter Belt, but I did enjoy seeing the different selection of patterns on their site. I find that - even of e-zines whose designs don't necessarily appeal to me - seeing the variety of possibilities involving fibre and two sticks is inspiring in and of itself. It is unfortunate, then, that The Garter Belt is no longer on the net.

Such a strange month, seeing the demise of Magknits, and now The Garter Belt, two rather long-standing online knitting mags and pattern sites. Still, few people can afford to leave their full-time job to devote all their time to an online publication; most sites are labours of love and devotion, not particularly money-making ventures, so who, then, could honestly blame anyone for choosing to discontinue a site if the time needed to maintain it is simply no longer available?*

Sadly, I remove The Garter Belt link from my sidebar, while wondering what online knitting site will next garner our interest and our favour.

*I have not heard/read any blame associated with the sad demise of The Garter Belt, which is nice and quite refreshing; all the ladies involved in keeping The Garter Belt on the net seem like truly lovely people, so I'm relieved that there seems to be no animus associated with the site or its being shut down.*

Grrr, or, Now why did I do that again?

If you look at any of the images in my posts, you will notice that the text butts right up to the 1 pixel border on the inserted images. For some reason, some time last year, I altered the coding of my site to make it do this (why, I have no idea, because I've never really liked it). Now I want to add a little space, and cannot, for the life of me, recall what I initially changed to make it look like this. Anyone have any ideas?

Examination, or, All Checked Out

Wembley went to the vet today! She hadn't been in, um, awhile. *lowers head in shame* Yes, we were a little negligent for the last year and a half, but she's been perfectly healthy, so, all things considered, it wasn't too bad. She was weighed (just over 10 1/2 lbs) and fawned over by the techs and assistants and the vet. Everyone loved her. And she was so well behaved! She was quiet and happy and co-operative; it was a little like how it must be to have a "good" dog! The vet told us she has very bad tartar on her teeth (which we'd noticed) and told us to use an electric toothbrush on her, which should be...interesting. Maybe I'll set up the camera to get it on video: I'm sure it will make for hilarious viewing, particularly for the cat owners!

The vet commented several times on what a good job we had done with her in regards to her temperament and her behaviour, and we sort of looked at each other and thought: "Huh??" The next time she gets obnoxious or loud, I'll have to remind myself that I haven't actually totally failed to raise my puppy properly. The vet referred to her as being of a fairly "bossy" breed, so I think the fact that we have as much control as we do must be rather an accomplishment!

She got her shots, and her heartworm meds for this year, and we got all the information on having her spayed, because no, we haven't had her scooped out yet. She's very much an indoor dog who gets all her real exercise tearing around the house, so the opportunity for accidental puppies to happen would be pretty limited, and next to impossible. Still, we definitely want to have her done. Not cheap!! But then, if we wanted a cheap pet, we would have gotten a goldfish. Maybe a gerbil. But you can't do this with a goldfish.

Advantages, or, Rotund

Yesterday afternoon, The Man was in a rush to get to a dinner meeting for this youth group thing he helps out, and asked me if I could walk the dog. Then he rephrased, and asked if I was physically capable of walking the dog. "I mean," he says, "could you pick up poop?" And I stopped and thought about it, and realised that, yeah, actually, that might be a little difficult now. When we had a foot of snow on the ground, and she was climbing up snowbanks (as she loves to do) it was no trouble, but now...it would certainly be tougher! I could, but since it's so much easier for him, I let him have that privilege. :)

If you can't use a giant preggo belly to get out of scooping poop, there's something wrong with the world!

A little update, or, thoughts?

A few formatting changes to the blog. Whaddaya think?

Soft, or, More baby content!

More baby stuff. The local fabric chain (it's a land of fabric!) is having a giant anniversary sale, so I decided that it would be wise to start picking up fabric for zee behbeh. On the left we have three flannelettes, in one-metre squares each for receiving/swaddling/burping blankets: a very soft and very lovely space-dyed fabric in blues and greens (The Man's choice), a nice cream with funky spots in blues and browns, and a chartreuse, cheeky monkey print! On the right we have bedding fabrics/fabric for the baby's room: a heavier-than-average quilting cotton in brown with a turquoise dot, and a finer quilting cotton in chartreuse with brown 'trees' (I think they're tree-like) and squiggles, and white and turquoise swirls. So pretty!! And they match unbelievably well, too. I got the brown and turquoise dotted fabric for about $2 a metre, so I bought 7 m of it! That should be ample material for crib, a fabric-covered pin-board, and possibly a diaper bag (I have a design hatching in my brain, and it is awesome!).

If you're thinking that you can guess what we're having based on the colour scheme, guess again. We have no idea, and we aren't finding out until this kid is out, either! I like the gender-neutralness of the fabrics: I don't want to impose my own uber-girliness on a daughter just because she happens to have the same sort of parts as I have (and truly, I can be pretty girly).

Leftovers, or, Tiny

After making the BIL's kilt hose last summer, I had some leftover sock yarn. I thought, what lovelier stuff to use for a baby sweater than nice, soft, sock yarn? I adored the smocking stitch I had used for the cuff of his hose, so I did some quick math and cast on. This will be a little cardi, knit flat in one piece from the bottom up. I've just reached the split between back and fronts, and I've also run out of yarn, so the project is just waiting for me to get back out to the shop to buy another two balls of it. Obviously, the same dye-lot being found is a virtual impossibility, so I'm going to switch to a nice, soft, mushroomy shade for the upper body and upper arms, so that the switch in dye-lots for the lower arms won't be so noticeable. Hopefully, this will actually be done before the Bean arrives. Also, I hope it fits; I have the sneaking suspicion that it is a little large for a newborn, but I have some ideas that may allow me to adjust the size for a smaller or larger Bean.

I'm gone for four months and then I post a novel...what can I say: I'm wacky.

Betcha thought I'd been abducted by aliens or something, huh?

Nope, still very much alive. Too much, perhaps, which caused the loss of the blogging mojo, as well as the knitting mojo, and also the general loss of my intelligence. Very frustrating, all, I tell you.

So, since it's been....roughly four months since my last real post, I have a little catching up to do. I won't bore you with crazy details, because, frankly, I'm lucky if anyone at all is interested in reading this at this point! In chronological order of occurrence:

- I'm pregnant. Well and truly at this point, as I'm just over 31 weeks. Great big belly, constant need to pee, back aches and all the fun of pregnancy. The first three months weren't particularly fun, the second three months simply flew by, and now I'm at the stage of just really, really wanting to not be at work and stay home and do house-readying, nesting things. How domestic. Gag me with a spoon! :D

- We moved! Thank heavens! The burbs were driving me bananas. Between the crazy people next door, and the crazy people next door to them, it was...crazy. Sure, I actually see more craziness now that we're downtown, but I don't find it objectionable to see people who have honest-to-goodness mental health concerns making their way in the world. The woman we lived next to out in the burbs, however, has no excuse for her behaviour. She's just a nutter by choice. And mean. And creeeeeepy.

- The Man has another job! And it's a permanent, not-on-contract, salaried position, walking distance from home. We park the car on the street and leave it there for days at a time! It's awesome! He's really enjoying it, too: he's a recruiter for an IT recruitment firm, placing people in positions with the federal government. It's quite a weight off both of us, knowing that he has a good job that he enjoys and in which he seems to be thriving before the baby makes his or her grand entrance.

- Work is changing. After the organization moved from Toronto to Ottawa there were some significant changes in personnel, as is to be expected whenever an office moves between cities over 5 hours away from each other. Recently our two primary administrative staff have both either stepped down or are in the process of stepping down. The changes are positive and good, and I'm very happy for both of them as they move on to new things, and in one case, gets to stop commuting every other week to room with friends, but it does mean a lot of change for us at work. It's actually pretty exciting, seeing that things are going to change a bit and watching the organization grow. What that means for me is pretty exciting, as well; with the personnel changes have come some alteration in the distribution of responsibilities, allowing me to take on more tasks that I'll really enjoy, and drop a few that I haven't been particularly enjoying (what the heck was a former religion and philosophy student doing running a database?!). So I'll go on maternity leave next month, leaving my job to somebody new (we're interviewing candidates this week!) and come back to a new job, with different responsibilities and...an office! I get walls and a kid in the course of 12 months! Awesome! I have a new boss, as well, and she is, quite simply, fantastic. I'm a very big fan of hers (she's the one who's getting me out of a cubicle and amongst proper walls, too)!

I mentioned that I lost my knitting mojo in addition to my blogging mojo. I truly did. I was commuting by bus for almost two hours each day during the first 4 months of this pregnancy, and the bus ride alone was almost enough to make me ill most days; since that was my primary knitting time, I saw a real drop off in the amount of knitting time I got in any given week. Plus, then I started going to bed around 8:30 every night, so there was pretty much no knitting happening for the first few months. In the past few months I've been back to knitting again, but until very recently there was no sunlight! Every day was cloudy or snowing. Quite depressing, and made for absolutely no good photo-taking. The upshot is that I don't have any knitting shots for you. I did, however, spend some time today looking at some splendidly shot blogs, with alarmingly beautiful photos, so I'm feeling very inspired to plaster this space with pretty pictures of...anything! I have one little thing in the works worth seeing, so look for it very soon. In the meantime, just in case you forgot, I still have the cutest dog in, yes, the world.