Author: Susan

I’ve been meaning to make a mobile for the baby, but I didn’t rush to finish before he was born (a case of completely misestimating the amount of two-handed crafting time that I’d have available). While Kevin’s parents were here for a week, I took advantage of all of the free bursts of time to make some progress on the project.

My vision was brightly colored wood and fabric dragonflies. I’d managed one coat of paint while pregnant, and in the last few days I’ve added a second coat, decorated them with polka dots, added a gloss coat, cut wings, and glued the wings to the bodies. 🙂 Here’s an action shot of the painting during the football games last weekend:

The wings make me happy. I’d been stalled on them, thinking that I’d sew them out of cotton and reinforce them somehow (posterboard inserts?) but that was seeming fiddly and like a lot of work. Then I remembered a set of placemats that we’d bought – they were supposed to be machine washable but then they shrunk badly. I was so disappointed and even though they’re no longer usable, I’d kept them. But now they’re quite thick and structured, plus still pretty – perfect for dragonfly wings.


I’m still needing some brightly colored yarn to hang them with, and then I’ll be done!

In bits and pieces over the last three weeks, I managed to knit enough stitches to finish off my last pre-baby knitting project: a hat to go with the hydrangea sweater.

Despite its 15″ circumference, it looks enormous on him, so we’ll see if it ever actually fits. But I was so pleased to have it off the needles, and to be able to cast on for something else with slightly bigger yarn that this with its 7.5 st/inch.

Then, this morning, he fell asleep on my lap after nursing and I was able to cast on and get through eleven whole rows of a new project before he woke up hungry again! It doesn’t sound like very much, but it was such an exciting combination of cuddling time and “me” time. Kevin documented the setup: rocking chair, nursing pillow, baby, Kindle (I just subscribed to the NY Times!), coffee, pattern book balanced on my legs, and knitting.

Yay, even if it will take eons to finish any projects at this rate. 🙂

I’d been hoping to make it to the Redmond Saturday Market for the first time since July. It closes at 3:00 and I didn’t manage to leave the house until 2:37, but apparently when you get there in the final minutes all of the flowers go on sale! So, at 2 bouquets for $10, I was so happy to bring home this:

and this:

Quite the successful field trip.

I had such aspirations of keeping up with my posting post-baby, but that was before the reality of a sleep schedule with a newborn hit. Oh, well. We’ve had many people pass along the “this too shall pass” mantra, and I think it applies to slow blog posting as well as newborn fussiness, nursing habits and sleep patterns.

Kevin had his fantasy football draft yesterday, and so the baby and I were on our own for the evening. I put him in the Moby so that we could walk down to the park before twilight hit (the days are starting to get quite a bit shorter!) and was so pleased to see that one of his knit hats fits!

Dreadful flash-y photo, but it was a quick effort due to fussing (he likes the Moby after a few minutes of walking, but was pretty dubious about the Moby+photo session combination). I can’t wait until more of the handknits fit – he still has such narrow shoulders that he swims in them.