Baby Alpaca!

I took a trip to Goodwill today.  I was in theory going there to find a large pot in order to cook huge amounts of pasta, but I like to look around and see what all is in there.  A few weeks ago when my parents where here we went looking for some clothes for my Dad.  While he got some shirts I found a skein of italian mohair for 99 cents.  Not a bad find, not bad at all.

Today, however I found a bunch of fun stuff.  Including, for 99 cents, two skeins of baby alpaca yarn.  It is so darn soft and lovely that when I brought it home I spent a good half hour stroking it and rubbing it against my cheek.  I would have rubbed it against my baby bump too...just to give the baby some alpaca yarn, except Emily started to get interested:

Yep, she loves it too.

We spent the rest of the afternoon alternately petting the nice yarn.  I have no idea what project this would be good for, but man is it nice to snuggle with now.

In other news the guy at Goodwill said that they had actually received four huge things of yarn.  I had cleaned out what was on the floor today (and picked up the mohair earlier) and he said there was more in the back.  They package this stuff in a weird way.  I had to buy some skeins of Sugar'n Cream in order to get both of the alpaca.  I also got some alpaca blends, and other pretties that I had to buy three bags to get the whole set.  I worry there may be more of this alpaca yarn in the back...waiting to be reunited with it's other alpaca friends.  Also, it'd be nice to have more than two skeins so I could have more project choices.  

Guess who is going to be haunting the Goodwill all week?  

Yarn Along 8

More Yarn Along!

I'm psyched!  The Bliss Dress I've been meaning to make for Emily is flying along.  I have about 30 more rounds before it's time to put on the straps and  convince her to model it.  After all those cables, just knitting and increasing is a breeze.  I'm liking how it's coming so far.

However, my ulterior motive for this dress has not panned out.  I bought this yarn originally for a blanket for my sister-in-law when she said she wanted yellow for her first child.  Then when it turned out to be a girl the colors changed to pink and brown and I was stuck with a whole lot of yellow, fingering weight, baby yarn.  I thought if I made a dress that should be made out of something thicker it'd use it up.  As you can see...it didn't even make a dent in one skein, much less the other four.

I need a new project.

I think I'll survive.

For reading it's pretty simple: I haven't.  I've cleaned.  I've knitted.  I have not read.  My book club is coming up and we are reading "Attachments" by Rainbow Rowell.  I was super excited by this because it's finally a book that isn't depressing or about a post-apocalyptic world which has been our theme for the past few meetings.  But I've just learned I have a military meeting I have to go to on book club night. It has taken the wind out of my reading sails.  Sigh.

At least I have extra baby yarn.

Knitting keeps me from unraveling

Judging by my last few posts, all yarn-alongs, the most interesting part of my life is currently my knitting.  Or rather the most enjoyable part.  I'm completely, totally, addicted to my knitting right now.  

A few weeks ago I told my husband I was getting depressed.  Either left overs from 1st baby PPD or a new beginning of 2nd baby PPD or it could be pregnant-lady hormones.  Whatever it is I'm slipping into the sad world.  It doesn't help that my husband's current schedule is really crummy.  5 days on at various times (Midnights, Afternoons, Early mornings, you name it) and then 2 days off.  Then 5 days on.  Then 3 days off.  Then another switch.  And another change.  When he isn't working he's sleeping and that means I'm awake with the baby alone - even when he's here.  

I'm lonely.

I'm depressed.

I'm pregnant.

I'm a little cranky.  

So one particularly bad day when I was lonely, sad, and had run into some real ugly in a person I don't really like I picked up my sticks and made a ball gag:

I'm calling it the STFU gag and it's for people who quite frankly need to, you know, STFU.

I felt better.

Then I casted on a baby blanket.

And a shawl.

And some odds and ends.

Then I bought some clearance yarn.

And I took some yarn off of someone else's stash.  

Then I did it again the following week.

I do a little work around the house and I then I search for patterns I want to make.  When I find one's I like I cast them on.  If I can't cast on right away I will go through my yarn and plan when I will cast on.  The other night I dreamt about some soft yellow yarn.  

When my parents came to visit I found myself grumpy again.  I was getting whined at by all the people in my house from age 18 months to 66 years and I was not happy.

So I casted on another project.  And I finished it in four days.  As soon as they left I spent the day cataloging my entire stash.  Today I took pictures of it, you know, for cataloging purposes.

I might be a little crazy over my yarn.  And my knitting.  And some crochet.  But at least I'm not feeling sad.

Proof?  The other day my husband said "You're handling that depression really well."  I responded "I have really pointy sticks."

Yarn Along 7

 I looked at my Ravelry page yesterday and noticed that I have four WIP's.  That I've documented.  I just like variety.

This is a project I casted on a few months ago, before Emily and I got sick, then sick again, then sick some more.  I actually think it's worse than that, I started this before I got pregnant.  It's a dress for Emily and it's very cute, but I'm using fingering-weight yarn for it and the cables and such are a pain to do.  Very slippery.  I am at the point where I only have three more rounds to do of the bodice and then I start on the skirt which is just increases and knits.  Over and over.

Yes, the bodice is short.  My kid is a toddler.  My Mother is appalled!

The book is "The Knitter's Life List"  I just got through the yarn section and now do indeed have a life list of fibers I want to play with.  Pineapple anyone?  Musk ox?  Yes please.  I've always wanted to cuddle with a musk ox.  

Actually, I've never been a fiber person before.  I tried to be practical.  I like to make clothes and I don't like to hand-wash them so I stuck to acrylics and cottons.  An occasional wool here and there.  Honestly, I mostly liked baby yarn - it's always care friendly and soft.  But now I am really into other types of fibers and yarns and getting into designer things like that.  Which is terrible.  You don't find that kind of stuff at Wal-mart.  The other day my husband asked if he could spend $160 on a hobby of his.  I shrugged and told him that I had spent $20 on yarn that week so he should be able to buy what he wanted.  If I get into fancy yarn my splurges probably won't be $20 anymore.  (Though I did find a skein of mohair for $0.99 at Goodwill this week.)

Yarn Along 6

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! ~


I've been busy fighting off the depression monster.  My main weapon of choice has been crafting.  I've been bouncing between tons of projects:

I told myself I would never knit another blanket.  I prefer to crochet them.  But I couldn't pass up this little number and when I found the Cheerful Blue Giggle Yarn on clearance it just seemed right.  I mean, it's made of Cheerful Blue Giggle yarn!  This is a spiral pattern baby blanket, super easy.  I started it last Thursday and am already quite far with it.  So far that I am considering doing fancy things to it like line it with cheerful fabric in the back and add rainbow colored fun yarn all around the edges.  New baby should be quite pleased.  


"Dragonwyck"  is the novel I'm knitting along too.  It's been raining like crazy here in Hawaii so a dark, gothic novel full of silly young women and brooding men seemed the ticket.  But so far it is far less depressing than "Wuthering Heights" and that's helpful.  


That's all.  Brooding novels and blue giggle yarn.  Take that depression!

Yarn Along 5

This week I actually started two projects - from total non-knittyness to two seems like a gigantic step for me, but that's probably just my head talking.  

The first is a second one of these.  No not the baby.  Well okay, yes the baby.  I am in the process of making a second one of those - hopefully just as cute and giggly as the first.  But what I meant was this week I started making a second bunny.  For the second baby.  I might make some hats for them too...or bows...just so each kid has their own special rabbit.  What super adorable about this is Emily hasn't really played with the rabbit I made her in awhile, but when I pulled out the big skein of boucle yarn at knit night this week she insisted on cuddling with it.  I think that's the sign of some good baby yarn - it's cuddly even before it is anything.

My second project is this.  It's a crocheted evening shawl.  Looks like it doesn't it?  Actually this yarn used to be a different crocheted evening shawl, but when I went back to work on it I had forgotten the pattern and hadn't written it down anywhere.  So I frogged the whole thing and started anew with a new pattern.  I bought a TON of magazines when Borders closed.  Anything that looks remotely pretty I bought.  They were 90% off - you would splurge too.  So I went through my stash of patterns and picked the River Walk from Interweave Crochet.  It's pretty enough.  I think it will do nicely for a vanity project.  

Also at the close of Borders I bought books I always sorta wanted to read, but not enough to actually actively go out and get it at the store or library.  Sarah Vowell had those books.  "Assassination Vacation" was the only one they had at the sale so it's the one I got.  Honestly, it's not that great.  It's quirky and witty and there are some interesting tidbits of information I pick up on, but it feels a little like being forced to see photos of someone else's vacation.  It's a travel log.  But it's not about the place, it's about the opinion of the author of something that happened at that place.  I'm less than hooked 88 pages in.  

However, it's my bath book.  Does anyone else do this?  When Emily takes a bath we splash and play for a little while.  I somehow convince her to wash her hair and get clean, then she is no longer interested in playing with me and just wants to swim around on her own.  So I sit back against the wall next to the tub and read a book.  Usually not anything enthralling, I have one eye on the swimming toddler, but I read.  It's about the only time I do.  Does this make me a bad mother - oh probably.  Whatever.  At least I made her a bunny from scratch.

Make up your mind

Obviously it's been awhile since I blogged.  It's even been awhile since I read my blogger friends posts.  But that's the internet so it's common to just disappear for awhile right?

What's more troubling is that I've somehow managed to just disappear from actual life too.  I've spent most of my time locked in the house.  I might be cleaning.  Most of the time I'm crying about the fact that I am not cleaning.  And then I don't clean some more.  Whole hours pass by and I can't tell you what I've been up too.  Emily has been plenty busy, you can tell by the damage she's left behind, but I've been not.  Not busy.  Not doing.  Plenty damaged.

Part of this is because I had a really bad case of pharyngitis that came around Christmas and didn't start getting better till a week or so ago.  Being really, really sick and in the first trimester of pregnancy allowed me just enough energy to make it downstairs, feed the kid, and then lie on the couch (and cry about how I wasn't cleaning).  I was keeping first Emily, then myself, in quarantine so we didn't give these germs to anyone else.  Staying home wasn't that bad.  But after months of self-containment I feel like I've gone past the "awww, I'm lonely" phase to the "awww, I don't want to see anyone."  In other words the depression is back.

I expected a little of this.  I was only just pulling out of the major awful that was PPD when I got pregnant.  Things were looking up of course and I was seeing an end.  Then pregnancy happened and that slow and steady progression went into hyperdrive.  All those new hormones that I wasn't making as a nursing mother suddenly hit me and I was no longer depressed at all.  A change this quick can't last.  I know it.  I just didn't know how long it would stick around.

Apparently just until the placenta has been made.

It sucks.  It sucks hard.  Any other person who hadn't been recovering from PPD when they got pregnant would probably feel the drop in hormones and mood at around the 13th week.  They might suddenly go "Hey, I have energy now!  But I sorta don't feel that happy."  I instead feel an overwhelming guilt that now I do, in fact, have energy to get up, but I hate it.  I have the energy now to get out to knitting, or call my friends.  But I can't step out the door.  I have the energy to go to the swimming pool and splash with Emily.  But I can't bring myself to put on a swimsuit.  I have the energy to cook now.  But I can't eat the food I cooked.  I have the energy to finally find some awesome books to read or art to do.  But I can't make my mind concentrate on it.

My mind isn't just sorta depressed or sorta tired, my mind is junk.  It's confused and depressed and happy and currently hiding in some brain cave in order to stay far away from the depression that's ready to eat it.

It's also keeping me from writing coherent blog posts or...simple emails.  Because I can't make up my mind if I'm depressed, about to be depressed, pregnant, or actually happy and I just don't know what happy looks like anymore.